Huge crowds have staged anti-migrant protests in Ireland amid growing anger at the government over an increase in arrivals and asylum claims. 

Over 1,000 individuals reportedly participated in a march that took place in County Donegal’s Letterkenny during the weekend, while a few hundred organized a counter-protest.

Ireland has witnessed a rise in anti-migrant sentiments in recent months due to the high number of asylum seekers being accommodated throughout the country. Many of these individuals are struggling to find housing, leading some to resort to living in tents, which has only fueled more frustration.

Named the ‘Letterkenny Peaceful Assembly/Protest Against Illegal Immigration’, the event commenced at the lower end of Port Road on the town’s eastern side, eventually concluding at Market Square.

Over in Carrickmacross, a similar protest, this one attended by around 800, was launched on Friday, where speakers criticised the Irish government and landlords profiting from housing asylum seekers. 

Local independent councillor Seamus Treanor said people living in his ward did not feel safe in their own homes, given heightened levels of anti-social behaviour. 

‘I want to get one thing straight – the reason we have a housing problem in this county is because our government opened our borders, and invited the whole third world to come in.

‘They came in their tens of thousands, and communities like Carrickmacross are suffering the consequences. 

‘The so-called opposition are in step with the government, and agree with their policy.’ 

Many were seen waving Irish and Donegal flags in protest against what they believed was a surge of illegal migration to the country. 

One little girl was seen holding a large sign that read: ‘TRAITORS ARE LIVING AMONGST US.’ 

But hundreds of counter-protesters were also present at the Letterkenny march, railing against the anti-migrant sentiment seen across the nation in recent months. 

The United Against Racism Donegal Group invited speakers, who spoke in favour of inclusion, respect and equality for all, and rejected the incitement to hatred.

Cops reportedly managed to watch over the incident without any confrontations, having erected a physical barrier between the two groups.   

In February, Ireland saw a wave of violence, with anti-migrant anger at an all time high – after the number of people applying to come into the country rocketed by nearly 300 per cent in five years.

Shocking videos showed Dublin descending into chaos – with fighting thugs throwing themselves into busses, knife fights on their streets and mass brawls sparking in residential roads.

In others, men patrol the capital to keep the city ‘safe’ while police can be seen using riot shields and pepper spray as they crack down on protests. 

As many as 150,000 people moved to Ireland in 2023-24, Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures revealed, the highest number in 17 years. 

Many of them are being accommodated in poor areas of central Dublin or small provincial towns. Only 30,000 of these were returning Irish citizens.

There are now nearly 33,000 international protection applicants being housed across the nation, up from 7,244 in 2017. Alongside arrivals from Africa and the Middle East, 100,000 refugees flocked to the country following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Each costs the nation nearly £70 a day, a figure that has increased by a third in two years. At the end of last year the Irish Refugee Council revealed there were a record 3,001 asylum seekers homeless in Ireland.

The budget for housing Ukranian refugees has been slashed from £910million in 2023 to less than £340million this year, with officials saying the reduction is expected to continue.

Once sleepy towns are now homes to hundreds of asylum seekers while tent cities have been set up along Dublin’s Grand Canal.

And with hard-right sentiment at fever pitch the country is on a knife edge – with even Ireland’s left-wing politicians admitting that the influx of migrants was driving a spike in homelessness.

Aoife Gallagher, from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, who monitors hard-right activity, has previously said that there has been an escalation in migrants being targeted in Ireland. 

‘We see consistently, a couple of times every week, horrific attacks on migrants,’ she told the BBC.

‘We see people standing outside IPAS centres waiting for asylum seekers in order to confront them and intimidate them.

‘There’s a level of political violence that we haven’t seen before.’ 

The Irish Refugee Council say there are now more than 3,000 asylum seekers homeless in Ireland. Since December 2023, 5,671 of 6,407 have been refused accommodation, while only 736 were immediately accommodated after a vulnerability triage.

Irish Refugee Council CEO, Nick Henderson, said: ‘We can’t continue to normalise homelessness and have the State effectively delegate its duties to volunteers and under resourced charities. It puts both people seeking protection and those helping them at risk of harm.’

Last year UK Government ministers flatly rejected Dublin’s demands to take back asylum seekers crossing from Northern Ireland.

The Republic has voiced alarm that large numbers are taking advantage of the invisible border on the island to avoid being deported to Rwanda, with ministers saying more than 80 per cent of the country’s asylum seekers arrive this way.

Then-Taoiseach Simon Harris vowed to pass new laws to facilitate returns of migrants, after the country’s courts declared the UK cannot be classed as ‘safe’ due to the pact with the African state. 

The government has previously spoken favourably about migration. Jamie Drummond, Co-Founder and Executive Director of NGO ONE and a friend of U2 star Bono, told the International Development Committee in 2015 that young immigrants were needed to help with Ireland’s ‘senile’ aging population. 

She said: ‘Just as this country and this continent will be at its most senile demographically speaking, Africa will be the world’s youth and the supply of the world’s energy, creativity and dynamism.

‘If we have invested properly in their education, governance and long-term security and the ability and belief that people can make a contribution in their economies and societies. 

‘If we fail to make those long-term investments because we are lurching in response from crisis to crisis or because we are indifferent, we will significantly regret the missed opportunity of having their engagement in a positive way and we will regret unfolding increased crises at that time.’

Project Ireland 2040 – an initiative unveiled in 2018 – forecasting nearly two million extra people in Ireland in 15 years time who would need an extra £96billion in investment for infrastructure and housing.

This huge figure was intended to be used to expand cities and settle rural areas, although it has quickly been left in the dust as the number of arrivals has reached more than double the initial estimates, The Telegraph reports.

A study by the London School of Economics found that hard-right protests in Ireland had seen structural racism and existing views ‘supercharged’ by social media.

And they blamed the government for cutting funding to anti-racism initiatives in the wake of the 2008 financial crash for allowing views to spiral.

They concluded: ‘More needs to be done to ensure already woefully neglected communities receive sufficient state resources to facilitate greater community integration of asylum seekers and migrants, allowing these communities to view immigration as beneficial, hence helping to tackle embedded racism.  

‘It is this issue of distribution which needs to be at the centre of public debate on immigration, rather than the toxic, polarising and racist frames favoured by the far right and, increasingly, some “mainstream” politicians. 

The hashtag ‘Ireland is full’ frequently trends on social media as experts fear sites like X have fanned suspicion within communities.

Researchers from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD) found misinformation by hard-right Irish figures is rising across all social media platforms in analysis of 13million posts from 1,640 accounts over the last three years.

They found that the pandemic had brought together previously fringe groups including those holding right-wing views and anti-vaxx campaigners around Covid conspiracy theories.

And when this passed the links ‘didn’t disappear’, with many moving on to target refugees and the LGBT community, The Irish Times reports.

X is the most common platform for hateful posts, with researchers finding 1,158 accounts that posted 11.7million tweets between January 2020 and April 2023. The creation of these spiked following 2022 immigration protests and Elon Musk taking over the site in 2023.

Kremlin disinformation also sparked a flood of disinformation following the invasion of Ukraine, including claims the war was started by the West and that Zelensky’s government was controlled by Nazis.

ISD said: ‘These narratives also aim to downplay the severity of the war and fuel animosity towards Ukrainian refugees by suggesting they receive preferential treatment over the local population.’