Huge opposition to Oughterard asylum centre | RTÉ News

Up to 700 people attended a public meeting in Oughterard, Galway where there was near unanimous opposition to any plans to accommodate asylum seekers at the Connemara Gateway Hotel. The govt has refused to confirm whether asylum seekers will be housed in the town but Cllr Tom Welby told The Niall Boylan Show last Friday that he believes the hotel is being renovated for this purpose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gdegcYt1mU

You can watch the vote taking place here (video credit to Gearóid Murphy | @gearoidmurphy_ on twitter):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbPeEbJQMCU

The Irish Times is also reporting that Minister of State Seán Kyne was booed and heckled at the meeting when he told attendees that Ireland was obliged under EU and United Nation laws to accept and process anyone who could prove they had fled persecution and injustices in their own country.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/minister-booed-as-oughterard-rejects-direct-provision-centre-1.4015379

Social Democrats Cllr Owen Hanley has accused TD Noel Grealish of telling a "racist lie" over claims made by GARN representative Joe Loughnane that he stated that the majority of Africans coming to Ireland are economic migrants who wish to sponge off the system and that the only genuine refugees in Ireland are Christians fleeing ISIS.
https://twitter.com/OwenHanleyLives/status/1171885875816554497

Hanley created a petition for Grearish to apologise.
https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/noel-grealish-td-must-apologise-for-racist-comments

You can email Noel Grearish to express your support at this email address: [email protected]

Previously Shannonside broadcaster Joe Finnegan told listeners that Minister for Immigration & Integration, David Stanton, has stated to him that the lack of consultation with locals when asylum seekers are being moved into a town or village was government policy as "if they informed people, there would be protest and nothing would happen".
https://www.youtu..