Galway TD invited to see reception for refugees by visiting Macroom ‘Racist rhetoric travels but so does kindness’
EMBATTLED independent TD Noel Grealish has yet to respond to an open invitation to visit Macroom and see how successfully recently-arrived asylum seekers are integrating into life in the mid Cork town.
Macroom Friends of Asylum Seekers founder Síle Ní Dhubhghaill wrote to the Galway West TD following controversial and widely reported comments he made at a public meeting in Oughterard earlier this month.
In her letter, Ms. Ní Dhubhghaill, who was a Social Democrats candidate in the recent local elections, detailed how welcoming the people of Macroom had been to the asylum seekers, who are being housed in the Riverside Park Hotel despite the ‘cloak and dagger’ attitude of authorities who decided to locate them in the town.
“Macroom is in a very similar situation to Oughterard – our GPs are full and the schools in the town are heavily subscribed,” she wrote. “Like so many other rural towns we are lacking in many services.
“It seemed to many local people that the lease was signed with the hotel and residents situated in a very cloak and dagger manner, which caused some upset among local people.”
She explained that the Macroom Friends of Asylum Seekers had been set up ‘ to try and create a proper Irish welcome for our our new neighbours’.
“It is worth noting that no asylum seeker thinks that the key to a better life is cramming a family of five into a hotel room in rural Ireland,” she wrote.
“Not a single one of our new neighbours chose Macroom – why would they?
“The lack of services affects them as much as it affects me or you – they have been here for six weeks and still don’t have a GP, even the children, pregnant women and people with long term illnesses.
“What we are all trying to do here is make the best of a situation that is not ideal.”
Following the successful participation of the asylum seekers in the ‘International Flavours’ event at the recent Macroom Food Festival, and other initiatives to help the integration process, Ms. Ní Dhubhghaill called on Deputy Grealish to work towards ‘abolishing the inhumane system of direct provision and encourage the government to house asylum seekers in suitable accommodation’.
“Your platform is an ideal place from which to spread positivity,” she wrote, extending an invitation to the TD to be shown around Macroom and meet her new neighbours.
“Racist rhetoric travels but so does kindness and generosity, and I am sure that if you lead by example your community will reap the rich rewards that we here in Macroom are currently experiencing.”
As of yesterday, as The Corkman went to print, Ms. Ní Dhubhghaill had not received a response from the TD. There was no response either from Deputy Grealish’s Leinster House office to enquiries from this newspaper.