It was announced recently that the Department of Migration have declined an offer to establish an IPAS centre at Academy House on Goff Street, Roscommon town. The decision follows a period of controversy locally over the proposed project, marked by public meetings and a protest.
These events were organised by Roscommon Says No to IPAS, a newly-established group formed in response to the initial plans. Naturally, the group has welcomed the Department’s decision on Academy House, releasing a statement in which they also clarified that the announcement does not signal the end of the road for their campaign: “With regards to the future of the group, our mission statement has always been to prevent the IPAS and any other future proposed IPAS centres in the town and surrounding areas.”
While unsurprising, it’s telling – in my opinion – that this is the direction the group’s focus has shifted towards in the wake of the proposals’ rejection – as opposed to the broader issues of infrastructure strain and social inequity that, before the decision, the group had been claiming as central to their cause. But then, of course, there remains the elephant in the room, the other possible reasons some have attributed to being behind the group’s stance.
Direction
It has been continually asserted by Roscommon Says No to IPAS that the group’s stance has nothing to do with direct or indirect racism and xenophobia. I want to believe this is true. I want to believe that the over 200 people who protested on the streets of Roscommon were all acting on what they believe to be very legitimate reservations about civic issues, and not ‘less savoury’ motives, as we have seen elsewhere. But I find that belief hard to hold in light of some of the rhetoric that has cropped up – both online and at the protest itself.
What has emerged is a pattern of strategic positioning – a public face that disavows any roots in prejudice, while quietly benefiting from the momentum such sentiment can, and has, generated for them. The reluctance to directly condemn the more troubling rhetoric surrounding their campaign – both from supporters and some group representatives themselves – speaks to a level of disingenuousness in my view, with the group instead opting to retreat into carefully worded statements that frame their motives as purely civic-minded.
There is perhaps no better example than the statement released on the heels of a local radio segment reacting to a recent protest, in which organisers moved to clarify the intended sentiments behind the chants, signs, and banners featured at the demonstration.
Explanation?
In my opinion, these justifications ring hollow and appear transparently unconvincing; post-hoc context delivered with the kind of unconvincing spin that assumes the public won’t – or can’t – read between the lines. Perhaps most absurd is the claim that ‘GET THEM OUT’ was not the reference to immigrants, asylum seekers, and people of colour in general that it’s widely accepted as targeting, but rather about removing Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil from government.
“While we can understand some misinterpretation”, the group’s statement continued, “the speeches explained the context.”
But to whatever degree July 6th’s speeches were peppered with criticism of sitting politicians, they are much more accurately characterised by their commentary on race, religion, and nationality – featuring repeated invocations of “stopping the takeover”, “fighting for the survival of the Irish race”, and calls to action to protect our Catholic “holy land”.
Framing immigration as a “takeover,” warning of threats to Irish racial or religious identity, and casting people seeking asylum as pawns in a broader cultural war are textbook markers of ‘Great Replacement’ thinking – a debunked white nationalist, far-right conspiracy theory that states with the complicity or cooperation of “replacist” elites, white European populations are being deliberately replaced through mass immigration and cultural assimilation policies. Despite being widely discredited and lacking any basis in demographic or policy reality, the theory persists because it’s emotionally charged and rhetorically simple. It transforms complex social phenomena – migration, integration, multiculturalism – into a binary struggle for survival.
In one of those ‘context-explaining’ speeches at the recent protest, John Wilson (a Cavan man who really does not want you to question why a Cavan man is speaking for Roscommon people) told the crowd, “It’s not a question of if Irish people will become a minority in Ireland, it’s a case of when”. This is an utterly baseless claim with zero demographic evidence to support it; Ireland’s population is overwhelmingly Irish in both ethnicity and citizenship (just 12 per cent of the population are non-nationals), and there has been no evidence to suggest migration patterns are nearly large or fast enough to cause such a shift.
I see these narratives as shameless fearmongering; weaponising people’s uncertainties and their urge to find something to blame in times of economic hardship and social fragmentation, that has time and again been mobilised into violence – from riots like those seen in Dublin at the end of 2023, to fatal examples in extreme cases. Even if most involved don’t want violence, movements built on these foundations always seem to find someone who does. Movements like this can make people confident in their hate, and breed danger – “BURN THEM OUT” was shouted by one protestor on July 6th.
Concerns
I know many local people who opposed the Academy House centre felt they were acting in good faith. But I can’t believe the same of the larger movement itself. It is not honest with the people it claims to represent, nor with the public it seeks to sway. It misleads with half-truths and obscures its motives behind vague, civic-sounding platitudes. It exploits people’s valid frustrations with housing, infrastructure, political inaction etc, and redirects them toward scapegoats. And while it disavows hate, it refuses to disown the hateful rhetoric and conspiratorial thinking it allows to thrive in its ranks. That is not a coincidence. That is a strategy.
For those with valid concerns, I warn that nothing will be fixed – not housing, not infrastructure, not political stagnation – by throwing your lot in with a movement that was never truly about solving those problems in the first place. I’ll remind you again that the moment Academy House was taken off the table, the group’s attention didn’t shift toward addressing the civic issues they claimed were so urgent – instead, they doubled down on preventing any future IPAS centres, here or elsewhere. That’s not civic engagement, nor does it address the real local needs. It’s not fighting for better services; it’s fighting to keep certain people out.
It’s important to be wary of how many of your fellow protestors are not acting in good faith. And if you continue standing with them, no matter how legitimate your frustrations, you risk being co-opted by a movement whose goals are fundamentally different from your own. You risk becoming a shield for their bad faith actions, lending your voice – and your credibility – to a cause more concerned with division, fear, and exclusion than it ever was with truth or community betterment.
