Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien said he was “very disturbed” about the anti-migrant protests that took place in Ballymun, Dublin, over the weekend.
The protests were directed against the accommodation of migrants in a hotel in Ballymun. Locals say they only could see young men entering the building, but this cannot be confirmed that it was only men. Officials claim women and children are there too but again locals don’t agree on this.
According to RTE, O’Brien said that after watching some of the protest videos, he thought “people have a right to protest, they don’t have a right to intimidate people”.
“We’ve been a welcoming country, rightly so. We know from our own history what it’s like to have to leave our own shores, due to oppression, due to war, due to famine.
“The vast majority of people living here support our efforts to look after people from Ukraine and people form other countries who are fleeing persecution. So it concerns me to see that,” O’Brien said.
“If people have a differing viewpoint, they are entitled to that, but they’re not entitled to intimidate people,” he said.
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