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...
Dublin InQuirer •

Some immigrant kids disappear from care to join family abroad, Tusla says – is there a safer way?

There’s a system for Tusla to help reunite kids with family in other EU member states, but not in the UK. Some lone immigrant kids who are taken into care by Tusla, and then disappear, “communicate their intention to travel on to other member states to join family members”, the child and family agency has said. Some had said they never wanted to stay here, a Tusla official said in a February 2023 letter to then Green Party TD Neasa Hourigan. After they leave, “many get back in touch to advise...
Dublin InQuirer •

Despite past visions for change, Dublin city’s motto still calls for obedient citizens

Have an idea for a better one? Let us know. More than a decade ago, Mary Freehill, former Labour councillor and then-Lord Mayor of Dublin, hoped to change the city’s motto. “Obedientia Civium Urbis Felicitas” is a Latin refrain that roughly translates to, “Obedience of citizens makes a happy city”. Freehill’s efforts got coverage and support in the media at the time. Laws are broken all over the city, all the time. That shouldn’t be the metric for its happiness, wrote Frank McNally in the Ir...
Dublin InQuirer •

For some workers, winning compensation at the Workplace Relations Commission is just the start of another legal journey

It’s not uncommon for companies to fail to pay – and it can be difficult to force the issue. When Uchenna Jude Dyke was told he couldn’t keep his job in a residential care home, he thought he would appeal that decision, he says. He had worked there for eight months as a social care worker, he said, recently. He loved it, he said. His bosses at Rehab Group, though, said his performance was not up to scratch. They ended his contract. Dyke had “five (5) working days” to appeal the decision, sai...
Dublin InQuirer •

As government moves to give Gardaí facial-recognition tech, it’s already available to public to use – and misuse

Online tools allow people to identify others from photos – opening the way for targeted ridicule, doxxing, or worse. For months in 2023, an anonymous account on X, called @GloverJanny, identified people from their photos. The account doesn’t exist anymore. But it was popular in anti-immigrant circles because its doxxing activities helped them advance harmful tropes. Extremist accounts would shout it out. At one point, someone asked the account owner if they worked for the CIA. Whatever tool...
Dublin InQuirer •

To offer legal support in a much faster asylum system next year, Legal Aid Board fights for more funding, documents show

It’s a year until the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact comes into force, and with it, big changes with implications for legal support. In September 2024, Emily Sherlock, director of internal service delivery at the Legal Aid Board, sent projections for the future cost of asylum legal aid to the Department of Justice. The estimates covered the potential annual price of legal support for people seeking asylum once the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact activates in June 2026. Ireland has opted into t...
Dublin InQuirer •

To get an Irish passport for a baby girl born here, they thought they had done everything right

Ara Wege sits on his mum’s lap, playing with a wristwatch. She has pink cat ears over her black curly hair and pink floral overalls and a bindi on her forehead. She’s just a couple of months older than one. Her parents, Jaques and Alisha Wege, had just dropped off their older daughter at the National Concert Hall, where she sings in the children’s choir. But in the lobby of the nearby Conrad Hotel, they’re both stressed. The passport office recently refused to give an Irish passport to Ara....
Dublin InQuirer •

Remembering Cathleen O'Neill, who beat down a path for other women

“A force bigger than life itself,” said a eulogy by O’Neill’s friend Carmel Jennings. “Working-class warrior,” said Rita Fagan, another friend of O’Neill’s. A large pram is parked beside the door at 58 Amiens Street. In a room on the left of the entrance, a baby boy wobbles on the ground, about to crawl. Downstairs, toddlers play and chat with workers at the crèche in Saol Project, an education and support hub primarily for women grappling with drug addiction – but also those experiencing pov...
Dublin InQuirer •

Fifty years after the Vietnam War, Vietnamese Dubliners peer back into the past – as they understand it

For some, life is an inherited ache to leave Vietnam and half-remembered stories and unprocessed feelings embodied in what their grandparents said, or didn’t say, about the past. In the basement of Sin É bar, Nghĩa Mai is doubled over with laughter. He’s standing in the back of a tiny room separated from the bar’s toilets by a dark curtain, behind three rows of folding chairs. On the stage, Rob Nother is riffing. His hair is styled in a mullet, he’s wearing a baggy black t-shirt and blue jean...
Dublin InQuirer •

With long and indefinite waits for an answer, people seeking Irish citizenship feel pushed to lawyer up

Between 2023 and late March 2025, the Department of Justice spent over €4.6 million on court cases brought by citizenship seekers, official figures say. Ali Butt had promised his kids he’d take them to Disneyland in Paris this summer, he says. He has three kids. He had reckoned he would have his citizenship and Irish passport by then, which would save on visa application fees and the hassle of grabbing a visa appointment slot, he says. But he’s given up hope now, he says. Butt, a Pakistani c...
Dublin Inquirer •

What's the best way to tell area residents about plans for a new asylum shelter nearby? - Dublin Inquirer

Damien Farrell has been a community activist in Dublin 8 for years, but when a plan for an asylum shelter in his area took shape, he only heard about it by chance. “Effectively, I read about South Circular Road on WhatsApp,” said Farrell, who stood as an independent in the area in the last local election.Once he’d heard, though, he talked to fellow members of Dublin Communities Against Racism (DCAR) and they got to work.They printed leaflets, met outside an off-licence on South Circular Road and...
Dublin Inquirer •

At a community garden in North Strand, Latina women share worries and swap pre-loveds - Dublin Inquirer

Liliana Fernández grabs an orange dress and puts it in front of Gabriela Burnett as they stand face to face with big smiles.  Burnett chuckles, holds the dress over her black dungarees and starts swirling and bopping her shoulders. Spanish-language music blasts in the room. Women are busy checking out jeans, dresses, crop tops, and jumpers hung from wheeled rails – borrowed from the not-for-profit reuse hub Change Clothes Crumlin –  and picking out accessories like bags, hats and beanies from a...
Dublin Inquirer •

Legal Aid Board called for “urgent action” to continue offering timely legal support to people seeking asylum, documents show - Dublin Inquirer

In June 2024, the director of internal service delivery at the Legal Aid Board wrote to the Department of Justice to ask it to act quickly.“Urgent action is required to be able to meet our obligations as the provider of independent legal advice to International Protection applicants,” wrote Emily Sherlock, show documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.The board needed 115 more staff, the letter said. It proposed opening an asylum legal aid office near the International Protection...
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