Protesters remove tent after four months outside North Cork accommodation centre

PROTESTERS objecting to the arrival of families seeking international protection in a North Cork town have removed the tent which was their headquarters for almost four months from outside an accommodation centre.

Since November, a small group of protesters had maintained a presence outside of Abbeyville House, a former bed and breakfast in Fermoy, which was recently renovated to serve as a centre for families seeking international protection.

A large tent, which had been positioned close to the main gates of Abbeyville House for almost four months, was removed by the protesters on Saturday night.

Operation

It came after the first residents of the centre arrived under Garda escort last Thursday afternoon in a well-planned operation, which saw the town’s Rathealy Rd closed off and 52 people brought into the accommodation centre through the back entrance to the former bed and breakfast.

The operation was carried out by local members of An Garda Síochána, with the public order unit in attendance in a support role. Afterwards, some of the protesters took to social media to complain that they had not been given time to react.

Abbeyville House, which is in Abercrombie Place on the northern bank of the River Blackwater, is the second accommodation centre for people seeking international protection to open in Fermoy, in addition to the former St Joseph’s Convent on the southside, which is home to 140 people, 69 of them children. The former Grand Hotel in the town was converted in mid-2022 to accommodate approximately 30 Ukrainian refugees.

At the end of November 2022, the first residents, many of them children, arrived at St Joseph’s in the teeth of an angry protest by approximately 80 people, many of them veterans of anti-immigrant rallies around the country.

It is understood that gardaí were determined to avoid any such scenes on Thursday as residents arrived at Abbeyville House, with a Garda source saying: “People have every right to protest but there is a difference between protest and intimidation.”

The protesters had, until last month, posted signs around Abbeyville objecting to its proposed housing of “56 unvetted males”.

Families

On February 14, the Department of Integration announced in a statement that the new centre would instead now house families. “It is intended that 56 people in need of shelter will be accommodated at the premises shortly,” the statement said.

“While initially earmarked for adult males, there is now an acute shortage of accommodation for families and it is intended to place families and children into this property shortly.” 

Since the announcement that the centre would now house families, the group replaced its initial signs with notices protesting about alleged irregularities in the planning process surrounding the change in use of Abbeyville House.

Those signs were removed over the weekend and the tent was taken down on Saturday night.

In November last year, an incident occurred at Abbeyville House, and was described by garda sources as an attempted arson attack.

No damage to the building was reported, and gardaí said that an investigation is ongoing.

Editor's note: In an earlier version of this article, we referred to a court order secured by Cork County Council, based on information available at that time. We have confirmed this was incorrect, and no such court order had been obtained. We are happy to correct the record.