Contractors working on sites for asylum seekers being targeted online

Kenneth Fox

Contractors, bus companies, and taxi firms linked to sites earmarked for international protection applicants are being targeted on social media by anti-migrant groups in a bid to force them to withdraw their services.

Online posts by such groups, which urge pressure to be applied to both individual workers and companies, have risen sharply in recent weeks, but one travel company has been the victim of such posts for more than a year.

As the Irish Examiner reports, in one instance, a hire company's owner was identified, their home address posted to social media along with descriptions of their house by an anonymous account.

This mounting pressure has led to some taxi drivers to alter their behaviour.

Some drivers were reluctant to accept offers of jobs transporting refugees after the clearing of a "tent city" in Dublin last week, the source said.

It comes amid renewed focus on the methods being employed by anti-migrant protesters who on Thursday showed up at Taoiseach Simon Harris's house.

While Mr Harris has said that new laws are not required to deal with such events, a bill from Fianna Fáil senators Malcolm Byrne and Fiona O'Loughlin, the Protection of Private Residences (Against Targeted Picketing) Bill, would make protesting at a private home illegal.

Last week a man in his 30s was arrested and released without charge after protestors attended the site of the Lawless Heron Hotel, which is currently not open for business, in Aughrim, Co Wicklow.

In a video posted to social media, a man tells the workers to “pack up and get the f**k out”, giving them an hour to do so.