Protest to continue but 'no additional' arrivals at Clare hotel after meeting with minister
Clare Asylum Seekers
The blockade of a Clare hotel housing refugees will remain in place after a meeting with residents appeared to have failed to find a solution.
Minister of State at the Department of Equality, Joe O’Brien, met a delegation of residents at the Temple Gate Hotel in nearby Ennis.
During the meeting, he agreed to review their concerns and assured them no more refugees would be sent to Magowna House Hotel just outside the shopless village of Inch, near Ennis, for the next month.
However, he told reporters, he first needed to see the blockade being lifted and promised to meet residents again in four weeks.
Speaking afterwards, he said: “They are going to take some proposals back to the wider community.
“My request is that the barricades are taken down and in four weeks' time I will come back down and meet with them again.
“During that four-week period, there will be no additional people coming to Magowna House Hotel.”
The meeting was seen as necessary to defuse tensions that have arisen as ministers have lined up to condemn the protest.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he believes no community has “a veto over who lives in their area” and has demanded the blockade be lifted.
The issue has also led to heated exchanges in the Dail between ministers and local TDs.
Before the meeting with the minister, he viewed the accommodation at the hotel and the three cottages in the grounds.
Residents have been blocking the entrances to the remote Magowna House Hotel with cars, tractors and hay bales since Monday.
They are objecting to the number of refugees - currently 28 but due to rise to 62 in weeks - being housed at the hotel complex.
They are also upset about the fact that nobody from the government spoke to them — or even an NGO body that handles immigrants' integration into local communities in Co Clare — in advance of their arrival.