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...
Dublin Inquirer •

In Inchicore, locals and newcomers celebrate each other’s company and culture through food - Dublin Inquirer

A clutch of little kids flooded the stage, bouncing and wobbling, holding balloon sticks in their tiny hands.Another group of little ones restlessly queued for face painting. A little girl coloured in pink on the ears of a cat mask.On Saturday evening, the gymnasium at the Inchicore Sports and Social Club was jumping with music and chatter. The hall is huge and filled with dozens of people.Lines of small country flags hung from the ceiling. On the tables around the room sat trays of chicken, jol...
Dublin Inquirer •

Mourning her Iranian husband, an Irish woman seeks out a Dublin Nowruz - Dublin Inquirer

Inside a sunlit room facing the roof garden of Chester Beatty Museum, the doors of a spacious lift slid open, and a clutch of people trickled out. Elma Khareghani, in dark blue jeans and a yellow jacket, with sunglasses on her short light-blonde hair, slowly treks over to one corner of the room.She’s nursing a cold and wears a medical mask to avoid passing it on, she said later. She and the others had come for a “Nowruz workshop”. Nowruz, which means new day in Farsi, is a 13-day holiday in Iran...
Dublin Inquirer •

For “urgent” questions, the Department of Justice directs asylum seekers to a chatbot. Is it trustworthy? - Dublin Inquirer

When people seeking asylum email the International Protection Office (IPO), they first get an automated reply.That email lists a few other email addresses to try, for accommodation questions or about work permits. In the end, it says if a query is “URGENT […] you can try our chatbot, ‘Erin’”.The chatbot, which pops up on the IPO website, links to a disclaimer and won’t start chatting unless visitors click “Yes, I accept”. People can start chatting even if they hadn’t clicked to read the disclaim...
Dublin Inquirer •

West African nurses question why they must wait longer than others for family to join them in Ireland - Dublin Inquirer

On a recent Friday evening, one after another, about 20 people logged into a video call.They’re all Black nurses from the west side of the African continent, now working in Irish hospitals and care homes. They share a problem: missing their kids or partners they’ve left behind to come and work here. They’re trying to bring them over, wishing and hoping for a visa decision to come, they say. But the wait can be long. Habiba Abdul Mumin, who works at the Coombe Hospital on Cork Street, had organis...
Dublin Inquirer •

Underfunded legal aid system may struggle to support asylum seekers next year, documents suggest - Dublin Inquirer

A staff member at the Legal Aid Board, in an internal email, suggested the new EU Migration and Asylum Pact could mean an increase in work on asylum cases.“We have seen figures from the Department [of Justice] that postulate further significant increases in demand on account of the EU Migration Pact,” wrote Ronan Deegan, assistant director of policy, development and external services in a 28 May 2024 email released under the Freedom of Information Act.The comment was part of a back-and-forth as...
Dublin Inquirer •

For some citizenship-seekers asked to submit more documents, technical glitches trigger refusals - Dublin Inquirer

On 27 January, Marcos Lopes Silva got a rejection notice on his Irish citizenship application. More than a month earlier, on 19 December 2024, the Department of Justice officials had asked him to submit some more documents. He had uploaded them the following day, he says. But then, on 6 January, he got a notification reminding him to submit the documents he’d already submitted.He knew something was wrong when he saw that, Silva says. “Just to be sure, I sent an email to citizenshipinfo@justice.i...
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