‘I will not be bandied a racist’

to our housing or health issues. In recent weeks we’ve seen the resurgence of a very well-supported community-led campaign to restore our health services, with people from three counties standing together in unity. This is the kind of action we need more of: we need to take our concerns to the centre of power to our TDs, Senators, Government and we must refuse to pit those with least power in our communities against each other”.

Persons from Syria, Iran, Somalia, Eritrea, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine that have arrived in Clare have been of “extraordinary benefit to the county and apart from their social contributions it is clear to those of us involved that our care services, tourism enterprises, health services and the construction industry would struggle without their presence”.

In a report released last year, Clare PPN detailed the huge housing vacancy rate in the county with nearly one in five houses unoccupied. “We are concerned, however, to see the recent rise in attempts by known individuals and groups to use these genuine concerns to manipulate communities into anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiment.”

PERSONS opposed to the arrival of asylum seekers to the Shannon Industrial Estate should not be brandished as racist, the Chairperson of the newly formed Shannon Residents Group has argued, writes Páraic

McMahon

At a meeting on Saturday morning in the Shannon Town Park, prospective volunteers for the new group were put forward with one of the main organisers of the gathering, Elaine Kingston Durbin later becoming its Chairperson. Shannon is struggling with a lack of services at present, she maintained. “My issue is the people making decisions about our town are not affected by the decisions when it falls apart, they are not looking for GPs, they are not looking for schools, I don’t want my parents or my children to be a statistic in a broken system. We need to fix what is broken, look at what Shannon needs and then you can look at bringing more people in”. People in the town have been afraid to speak out, Elaine flagged. “There’s people who contacted me during the week who said they’ve had older people come to them that are not on Facebook and are afraid to speak out, they want to be the voice for them, we need people on the committee representing the views of people in their community that want to speak but can’t. You saw what happened today, people wanted to speak but were shot down, it can’t be about racism, people need to clear about that. I won’t be bandied a racist because I’m absolutely not, I’m genuinely concerned about the impact it will have on the town.”