Mayo Green Party candidate voices disappointment at ‘shocking’ Mayo County Council motion on refugees

A MAYO Green Party local election candidate has said he is ‘extremely disappointed’ by a Mayo County Council motion calling on the local authority to cease cooperation with the Department of Integration. 

Peter Nolan, the Green Party candidate for West Mayo in the local elections, said that the county ‘could not act in populist isolation from the rest of the country or turn its back on the obligations that Ireland as a whole has under international law’ regarding its treatment of refugees.

Last Monday, county councillors passed a unanimous motion calling on council officials to cease cooperation with the Department of Integration ‘until such time as an agreed strategy is put in place to properly coordinate the provision of additional services for the communities’ hosting refugees and international protection applicants’.

There are currently over 1,200 people seeking international protection in Mayo, as well as almost 3,000 refugees from Ukraine – also known as Beneficiaries of Temporary Protection – living in state accommodation.

Mr Nolan hit out at the Mayo County Council motion, calling it ‘regressive and isolationist’.

He acknowledged that the issue of integration is ‘not an easy one to manage, particularly given the increase in applicants over the past two years’. 

“However, offering people fleeing persecution safety was something that we should be proud to do and something that we should recognise as a good thing,” he added.

 “While you might expect that some more regressive Councillors might consider this the right move, it is shocking that all Councillors chose to support this motion.

“The issue of immigration is not an easy one to manage. The Minister for Integration, Roderic O’Gorman, has himself said that the current system is not working and that he is putting in place plans to move to a situation where more accommodation is State-owned or State bought. In the meantime, however, the answer is not to turn our backs on people who need our support and compassion now.

“Over the past week I have heard from many people who feel that they have been let down by their elected representatives. This backward motion really underpins the need for a progressive, Green voice in our local politics – one that understand the complexity of the issue of immigration but one that is not going to rush in to put up populist guard-rails.”

The Mayo County Council decision came after a protest in Ballinrobe, with some people voicing their concerns about male international protection applicants arriving in a local hotel.