(CN) — Thousands of demonstrators gathered on the streets of Dublin on Monday, protesting against the rioting and disorder that spread across the Irish capital last week.
The rally, which had been organized by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, sought to stand against “mindless violence” and “pernicious, racist, xenophobic violence against our migrant community,” according to the organization's general secretary, Owen Reidy.
The response is indicative of a nation that is quickly having to become familiar with previously unthinkable public displays of social division. Last week’s riots, which followed a triple stabbing in the city, were shocking for some in a country without a long history of race-related public disorder — though many argue that trouble had been brewing for some time.
Following the stabbing, unconfirmed rumors quickly spread online that the attacker was of foreign descent. Angry mobs then descended on O’Connell Street in central Dublin and engaged in looting and the torching of vehicles, while fighting pitch battles with police for hours.
In the aftermath of the riots, leading politicians pointed the finger of blame in different directions. Mary Lou McDonald, leader of opposition political party Sinn Féin, accused the Irish government of failing to resource the police force sufficiently, and taking a lax approach to clamping down on criminality since the end of the pandemic.
Hitting out at an “unacceptable, unprecedented collapse in policing,” McDonald said: “The idea that this violence was unforeseeable is frankly nonsense. These hate-filled mobs have threatened and brought violence to our streets before … I do not say the following lightly, but it must be said. I have no confidence in how Dublin is being policed.”
Meanwhile, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has blamed a “lunatic fringe” of far-right agitators for the violence, vowing to bring in emergency legislation in response.
“We need to reclaim Ireland from the unscrupulous who prey on the fears of those easily led into darkness and we need to reclaim Ireland from the criminals who seek any excuse to unleash harm on our streets,” Varadkar said in a press conference.
The legislative response includes new laws to clamp down on online hate speech, as well as reducing restrictions on the use of facial-recognition technology to aid police in identifying the perpetuators of the violence.
The facial recognition powers have been welcomed by police, who have pledged to arrest and prosecute all those involved in the violence as quickly as possible. But law-and-order responses are unlikely to address the deeper roots of the unrest, which are now subject to a post-mortem across Irish civil society.
Ireland’s reputation as a migrant-welcoming nation in a continent of growing anti-migrant sentiment has long been established, even if such a view was always simpler than the reality. The decision by the government to take in almost 100,000 Ukrainian refugees (among the highest per capita intake in Europe) added to such a perception — as has the emergence of Dublin as an international city over the past decade — absorbing students and workers from across the world apace.
But large-scale immigration to Ireland is a relatively new phenomenon in a nation where for decades emigration has been the norm. Alongside growing immigration, reports of racially motivated abuse have gradually risen in recent years. An EU-wide survey published this year showed that 55% of Black respondents have experienced racial discrimination in Ireland over the past five years — one of the highest figures across the entire bloc.
At the same time, a protest movement targeting temporary accommodation for asylum seekers has rapidly emerged over the last year. Under the slogan “Ireland is full,” the movement has utilized tactics such as the blockading of roads and firebombing of proposed refugee shelters. More than 300 separate incidents have been reported in this time across the country, culminating in widespread disorder outside the Irish Parliament building just two months ago.
President Michael Higgins addressed the rising tension in his St. Patrick’s Day message this year, praising the “resilience and necessary courage of migrants.” But at the same time, the institutional response to this growing social divide has been slow.
In many respects, rising anti-migrant sentiment is not unique to Irish society — it is also becoming common across the European mainland. But the extent to which reports of racial discrimination in Ireland appear to revolve around the issue of housing is more unusual.
Alongside the population bulge, Ireland is in the grips of a chronic and stubborn housing shortage that has persisted for years and grown into a national political scandal. Ireland is a quarter of a million houses short of meeting demand — in a country of just over 5 million — and more than 13,000 people are homeless. Sky-high rents and an abundance of empty holiday properties add to the disquiet.
The extraordinary resurgence of left-wing Sinn Féin as a political force after picking up a historic popular vote victory in the 2020 general election is in part testament to the party’s relentless focus on the housing crisis.
But the outbreak of violence on the streets of Dublin last week is likely to raise the salience of the issue — and of Ireland’s shifting relationship with migration — to a far greater extent.
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
