Dublin InQuirer •

Was the Department of Justice using experimental chatbots to give immigration advice?

“The public should not be used as guinea pigs, particularly vulnerable groups in a legal process which could be impacted by a chatbot giving an incorrect answer.” Department of Justice chatbots to answer questions about asylum and citizenship were developed via a “pre-commercial initiative” that was “aimed at supporting the early stages of developing new technologies and products”. That’s according to Enterprise Ireland, in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act by Kris Shr...
Dublin InQuirer •

As government support for sheltering Ukrainian refugees dwindles, finding somewhere to live means taking more risks

“I understand now how valuable it is to help each other. How important it is to have a roof over your head, to have community.” Oleksandr Kisil pulls up a WhatsApp conversation with a recent ex-landlord on his phone. He’s a refugee from Ukraine, 21, and studies film in Ballyfermot College. He has a moustache and a mushroom haircut, like Jack in Titanic. And he’s warm, chatty and bubbly, small-talks with strangers. His favourite drink at Café Nero on O’Connell Street is strawberry matcha with...
Dublin InQuirer •

People with darker skin over-represented among crime victims, new survey suggests

The City Centre Crime Victim Survey was commissioned by Dublin Inquirer and carried out by Amarách Research. People of colour were over-represented among people who reported having been victims of insults, abuse, and crime in Dublin city centre in the previous 12 months, in a new survey. In a sample of 600 people who responded to our City Centre Crime Victim Survey, only 80 respondents said they have darker skin tones. That’s 13 percent. But this group, who said they had skin tones ranging fr...
Dublin InQuirer •

On Hardwicke Lane, a tiny masjid faces hostility and xenophobia, but it can’t afford to move

A new report says there’s a lack of spaces for faith-based communities in the north-east inner-city, and urges the council to help. In the north inner-city, wedged between Dorset Street and Hardwicke Street, is Hardwicke Lane. Down this laneway, there’s an Islamic community centre that doubles as a small masjid, which is Arabic for mosque. There’s no sign on the building’s heavy green door. But a small plaque that reads, “Sultan Mecid Education Centre” is affixed to the wall above it. Tunaha...
Dublin InQuirer •

Years after promise of a new integration strategy, Dublin City Council still doesn’t have one

There’s a desperate need for a roadmap to improve efforts to help people navigate immigrant life, and connect, say councillors and community workers. For months in 2021, it looked like Dublin City Council (DCC) was busy chewing over plans for a new integration strategy covering the years 2021 to 2025. Then the momentum died. All those years that the council was meant to lead integration efforts with a concrete roadmap have slipped by without one. Meanwhile, almost one in five people living in...
Dublin InQuirer •

“Voluntary” return schemes might be good for state – but not for asylum seekers, activists and academics say

They’re pressure campaigns and can lead people to make bad decisions, they say. But a Department of Justice spokesperson says they’re purely voluntary. On 30 September, Leanke Nikles’s phone lit up with a text on her asylum centre’s WhatsApp group. It was a “voluntary return leaflet” with the message asking people in the group to read it. Two people reacted with a thumbs-down emoji. These leaflets are also sometimes slipped under bedroom doors or handed to them as they go about their day at t...
Dublin InQuirer •

At council meeting, amendment highlights messy politics around planning exemptions for asylum shelters

“It was a little bit ill-informed, but they were in a rush to, you know, counterbalance Mr Pepper,” says independent Councillor Mannix Flynn. At a special council meeting, on the evening of 23 September, independent Councillor Gavin Pepper pitched a motion. His proposal called on the government to “withdraw all planning exemptions” for asylum shelters. Pepper said this wasn’t just an objection to the flaws of the planning exemption scheme, but to immigration in general. “Contracts are signed...
Dublin InQuirer •

A Desi group asked BuyMeACoffee not to let influencers make money from anti-Indian hate – and got ignored

Researchers say the role of crowdfunding platforms in the spread of harmful ideologies is largely overlooked. When members of Desi Community Against Racism noticed that some Irish influencers who post anti-Indian hate use BuyMeACoffee to raise funds, they decided to report it together, says Shashank Chakerwarti. They were shaken and angry because of real-life violence against Indian immigrants in Dublin, and worried inflammatory online posts make things worse, says Chakerwarti, a member of the...
Dublin InQuirer •

Smears and threats against lawyers representing people seeking asylum ramp up

“Solicitors play a vital role in the administration of justice and any threat to them is an attack on the legal rights of every person,” said a Law Society spokesperson. Over the weekend, an anonymous X account, which has repeatedly posted about lawyers representing those seeking asylum, shared a spreadsheet of firms involved in asylum cases. It would review them more deeply in the coming weeks, one post said. What exactly that means is unclear. But negative posts targeting those who represen...
Dublin InQuirer •

Against law, the Courts Service website published names of some people seeking asylum by “error”

A spokesperson says it has revised its processes to make sure it won’t happen again. But on Tuesday, some applicants’ names remained on its website. On 5 September, searching “International Protection Appeals Tribunal” (IPAT) on the Courts Service website’s High Court search engine threw up 76 filing notices. They included full names of people who’d brought cases against IPAT as recently as this month and as far back as 2017. Most of these cases were docketed on the court’s “asylum list”, the...
Dublin InQuirer •

When people die waiting in Ireland’s asylum system, their bodies may lie in limbo

When people seeking asylum in Ireland die, their bodies can lie in limbo as officials search for their next of kin, documents released under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act suggest. An internal message dated 14 January, from an International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) official, says that it doesn’t have any information on the identity of a “next of kin” for a deceased person who lived in an asylum centre on file. “I have been informed that no burial can take place until the...
Dublin InQuirer •

As anti-immigrant Dubliners hang more and more Irish flags, immigrant Dubliners exhibit objects that embody their Irishness

Harikrishnan Sasikumar’s exhibition of photos of these objects, At Home in Ireland, is on display now at The Hive at DCU’s U building. On Saturday afternoon, a sticker on a traffic sign at the entrance of Hazelcroft Road in Finglas said “BEWARE OF THE IRISH” over a line in the shades of the Irish tricolour. A flag rolled and danced on almost every lamppost on the road. They sprouted from the houses, too. Dublin City Council is considering what to do about these flags, its chief executive has...
Dublin InQuirer •

Calls for progress on returning African relics held at the National Museum of Ireland

Most are weapons, taken as souvenirs of colonial wars, said Olusegun Morakinyo, Africologist and former visiting scholar at the TCD. On the fourth floor of Trinity College Dublin’s (TCD’s) arts building, around two dozen people watched in silence. Playing on the screen, in the 4050B lecture hall, was an Al-Jazeera documentary Restitution: Africa’s Stolen Art. A banner from the Africa Centre sat in the corner. “Advocate. Educate. Network”, it said in dark-red letters under the logo. Later on,...
Dublin InQuirer •

Despite overcrowding, prison officials told to exclude immigration detainees from temporary release

The Irish Prison Service had asked the government to revisit the policy, given more serious high-risk offenders had to be released early to make the space. The Irish Prison Service (IPS) didn’t have the capacity to accommodate short-term, low-risk offenders, like immigration detainees, its director general told a Department of Justice official in a February 2024 letter. Since November 2022, the IPS had notified the government that it was letting out not-so-dangerous prisoners temporarily to ea...
Dublin InQuirer •

For Ukrainians asking if time on temporary protection counts towards citizenship, no clear answer from the government

Sinn Féin, meanwhile, is clear that it doesn’t think the time should count towards citizenship. Polina Afanasieva is growing used to her life in Dublin, she says. “Just yesterday, I went to dance classes, and I was so excited about it,” she said on Saturday morning, sitting outside Costa café in Smithfield. Afanasieva is young and smiley. She works in insurance at the moment, she said. Afanasieva arrived here in April 2022 under the EU’s temporary protection directive, which unlocked the zon...
Dublin InQuirer •

As an anti-immigrant encampment dwindles on Basin View, its organisers try to rally

One man who’s been involved has been trying to organise a social event on a nearby council football pitch, something the council says it’s “monitoring”. On Thursday, about noon, Damien Farrell small-talked with his neighbours on Basin View, a stone’s throw from the Fatima Luas stop. “You can see the glow on you,” he said, laughing, to a tanned, slender man. Farrell lives just up the road, a few feet away from Basin View, the entrance to which is marked at the moment by two tricolours. On Thur...
Dublin InQuirer •

Rising above a provocative headline, a woman asks the press to frame immigration stories with care

“I don’t want my story or the way my headline was written and the backlash it got to be a prime example for immigrants to not tell their stories,” says Sumyrah Khan. On the morning of 1 July, Sumyrah Khan was getting ready for work when her phone began to buzz, she says. “It was like 7am,” she said recently. Someone from the Labour Party – she is a member –  had messaged her about an article in the Irish Times’s “New To The Parish” column, featuring Khan. “And I saw the headline and my stoma...
Dublin InQuirer •

Most asylum shelters are not subject to HIQA inspections

Instead, they are inspected by IPAS staff or an inspections company – but is that working? In April 2024, officials from the International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) – the office in charge of offering beds to people seeking asylum – visited Esplanade Hotel, an emergency asylum centre in Bray in Co.Wicklow. Later, they laid out feedback and complaints shared by residents during the visit, show documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. But the last official IPAS ins...
Dublin InQuirer •

For some immigrant security guards, just doing their jobs brings harassment

After the abuse he’s faced, Marin Glamuzina says he’s not doing well. Kayur Prajapati says faces vitriol regularly. On Saturday, Marin Glamuzina was standing at the entrance of a Sports Direct shop on North Earl Street. He’s tall and lithe, in a security uniform and a high-vis vest. It’s just five minutes before he can take a break. His colleague nods that he can go early. He’s not doing well, said Glamuzina, strolling towards a nearby café. In July 2024, Glamuzina escorted out three teenage...
Dublin InQuirer •

In a boxing club with ties to Conor McGregor, some non-white and immigrant athletes seek to connect and belong

Crumlin Boxing Club is run by Philip Sutcliffe Snr, McGregor’s boxing coach, a Dublin city councillor who – like McGregor – has voiced anti-immigrant views. Ayser Nehar burst into a small room on Friday, a floor above a boxing ring and dangling fat punching bags at Crumlin Boxing Club on Windmill Street. His face and shaved head glisten with sweat. He’s standing in front of Philip Sutcliffe Snr – former boxer, twice Olympian, ex-military man and now independent Dublin city councillor. Nehar’s...
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