In the charming town of Saggart, located on the southwestern edge of Dublin, locals continue to embrace the community’s village-like aura, complete with its quaint Irish pub, church, and bustling local high street. However, this once quiet town has now found itself at the center of a storm, amid rising tensions linked to Ireland’s burgeoning migrant crisis.

Recently, Saggart has been thrust into the spotlight following disturbances related to a local hotel accommodating 2,300 asylum seekers—an amount that represents a significant portion of the town’s population. These unsettling events unfolded in the wake of an alleged incident involving the sexual assault of a 10-year-old Irish girl, reportedly by a 26-year-old African migrant awaiting deportation near the contentious Citywest hotel.

The past two nights have seen Saggart embroiled in chaos, with riots breaking out in response to the alleged crime. Law enforcement officers have been engaged in intense clashes with incensed residents, striving to prevent a large group from storming the hotel grounds. In the heat of the protests, some demonstrators resorted to charging the police with horse-drawn carts, resulting in injuries and the hospitalization of three officers.

This situation mirrors recent unrest in places like Epping and Stockport, where local law enforcement faced similar challenges. In these areas, communities were similarly transformed into temporary housing centers for migrants, sparking frustration and unrest among residents.

In Saggart, as in other affected towns, the local population’s patience has been tested beyond its limits, especially in the wake of such serious allegations, leading to a volatile atmosphere and an urgent need for resolution.

And like Epping, patient and friendly locals appear to have snapped after sex crimes were reported.

Indeed, residents of Saggart believe the violence was inevitable due to the mass influx of migrants into their community.

The presence of so many men roaming around local streets, drinking in public areas and sometimes taking drugs has left many locals fearful for their safety and scared to let children play outside alone.

Amanda Adeba, 39, a spokesperson for the Saggart Guardians a group opposed to migrants housed in the Citywest hotel, said: ‘We are only a small village, but we have the biggest hotel in the whole of Ireland now full of asylum seekers.

‘Nobody had a problem when it was just Ukrainians because they were fleeing war, but now we also have thousands of single, unvetted men with many of them coming from very different cultures to our own.

‘They fight amongst themselves and there is a problem with anti social behaviour such as drinking and drug taking in public areas around the village.’

Tensions were already heightened in Dublin this week after a Ukrainian teenager was killed in an attack at a refugee centre allegedly carried out by a Somali migrant.

Last month, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan said there were currently about 33,000 people in what Ireland describes as ‘international protection’.

According to the BBC, that figure was 7,244 in 2017.

Back in Saggart, Mrs Adeba whose husband is from Nigeria said she feared for the safety of their two daughters aged six and nine, and felt unable to let her older daughter play outside or walk home from school alone.

She added: ‘The Government went ahead and turned Citywest into a massive centre for refugees, despite this area not having the proper infrastructure. We do not even have our own Garda station here.

‘We do not condone violence, and all our protests have been peaceful, but I blame the Government for what has been going on because they did not listen to the people. It feels like Ireland is being destroyed.’

‘My concern is that the hotel does not have a curfew so migrants are free to come and go as they wish, even at night. But the authorities say they cannot do it because so many of them work night shifts.’

Saggart has been one of Ireland’s fastest growing communities for many years with the number of full time residents more than doubling from 2,144 in 2011 to 4,573 in 2022, according to official statistics.

But a string of recent new developments is thought to have increased its population to nearly 6,000 people without taking into account the residents staying in the hotel, courtesy of Irish taxpayers.

The giant Citywest hotel which boasted 764 guest rooms, a 4,000 seat conference centre two golf courses and a leisure centre became Ireland’s biggest hotel when it opened in 1994 after being built by millionaire property developer Jim Mansfield.

It went into receivership in 2010 before being sold to a succession of property companies and closing in March 2020 when the Covid pandemic struck and the Irish government struck a deal to use it as an isolation centre.

The government continued to lease the complex in 2022, initially using the hotel rooms to house Ukrainian families fleeing their country’s war against Russia before developing the conference centre to accommodate refugees.

The hotel is now by far the largest of Ireland’s 320 so called International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) centres which house around 32,500 asylum seekers or refugees across Ireland.

 

This increase comes alongside a growing issue of migrants attempting to use Ireland as a stopover to reach the UK.

Criminal gangs reportedly charge up to €8,000 (£6,600) to smuggle migrants across the border from Ireland into Northern Ireland after advertising it as a safer route than crossing the Channel on small boats, according to officials who spoke to the Mail last year.

They then have the choice of staying in Northern Ireland or travelling to mainland Great Britain.

The Irish government bought the 14 acre Citywest hotel site outright for €148.2million in July this year, as an alternative to leasing it which cost 70m euros last year and €53million in 2023.

The move contrasts to the continuing UK government’s policy of continuing to house asylum seekers in hotels, leased from private companies at huge cost, while struggling to find enough accommodation for them in HMO houses and facilities such as old military bases.

In another major difference, asylum seekers in the UK are banned from working and survive on UK taxpayer handouts while those in Ireland can get licences to work once their applications to stay have been considered for six months.

The purchase of the Citywest hotel was described by the Irish government as ‘part of a long term strategy to develop a sustainable accommodation system’ for migrants, and it expects to recoup the money which it would have spent on leasing the premises within four years.

But assurances that buying the complex will potentially save the State more than €1billion over the next 25 years have done nothing to alleviate the fears of Saggart residents who believe their community has been taken over.

Opposition to the migrant centre has been led by a local group called the Saggart Guardians, which collected over 13,000 signatures on a petition opposing the purchase of the hotel.

Another resident Anne Kavanagh, a mother-of-two who is aged in her mid-40s, said: ‘I only live five minutes walk from the hotel, but I always pick my son up from school because I don’t think it is safe for him to walk alone

‘You often see guys from the hotel sitting drinking on the concrete seats in the centre of Saggart, or even taking drugs in the graveyard where we have had graves vandalised. They seem to get welfare payments on a Wednesday or a Thursday and go to the shop to buy alcohol.

‘They go out in groups and are very intimidating. They are unpredictable and when you walk past them, you can tell that they are saying something about you. Other women get it far worse and I have heard of an incident of indecent exposure.

‘I even saw a couple of them sipping Corona beer and smoking marijuana on the steps of the primary school last Thursday, just as children were about to exit form an after school. I called the Garda and they came and moved them on.’

A local businessman who only wanted to be named as Richard, 61, said the presence of migrants had hit local property prices, and had led him and his wife to decide to sell up and move out of town.

He said: ‘My houses have been on the market for eight weeks for €340,000 and there is nobody even wanting to view it. The estate agent is telling us to lower the price by €40,000.’

Professional boxer and social media influencer Jordan Burnett, 28, told how the gym on the Citywest hotel site had stayed open for the use of local members, but he had now decided to quit his membership.

He said: ‘I am giving it up because I don’t like what is going on there. The gym is in a separate building to the conference centre.

‘I posted a video out of the window showing 40 or 50 new arrivals getting out of a bus, and when I later went back to the gym, they had blacked out all the windows to stop anyone looking out at the bus again.

‘My girlfriend’s mother got married in the hotel when it was a wonderful venue. This used to be a brilliant place to live, but it has got horrible in the last 18 months to two years. People don’t want to let their children use the playground in case they get snatched.’

A mother-of-three from the area who is also a health worker said: ‘Local services are already overloaded here, and we are unable to cope with such a huge number of people in the hotel. It feels like the community here is being used as a sacrificial lamb to take in so many people.

‘The young men in the hotel are from different cultures. They hang around the area in the park and around shops, and you see them leering at young girls. It is very intimidating,

‘When this all started, we didn’t really want to have protest directly, but we did have a couple of rolling car protests to slow down traffic. We are not racist and we don’t want to intimidate people. We just want to draw attention to it

‘What happened to this young girl was just horrendous. We knew something like this would happen. It’s just heartbreaking.

‘The protests that are happening now have become a nationwide issue and it reflects the frustration that local people feel about the Government not listening to their concerns. The convention centre was never intended to house people.’

Ukrainian friends Yuliia Askarova, 30, and Mariia Sameniva, 27, who both work as baristas and live together near the hotel said they were left terrified in their home as the riot erupted on Tuesday night.

Protesters smashed up utility units housing gas and electricity supplies close to their home so they could use bricks to hurl at the police, leaving some local properties without power.

Yuliia said: ‘We are also migrants, but we are two women and not the same as the men living in the hotel. I have not had any problems personally, but you are wary with a lot of men around. I don’t think the hotel should be used for this purpose.

‘It was terrible and scary when the riot was going on. My car was vandalised when it was parked over the road. It was very dangerous when the protesters started to throw bricks.’

Mariia said: ‘You have to be careful. A few days ago, a 17-year-old Ukrainian boy got stabbed and killed at an accommodation centre and an asylum seeker has been charged with his murder.’