Shortly after 2.30pm last Tuesday a message was posted in a WhatsApp group for newly arrived international protection applicants (IPs).
The message warned of heightened tensions in the area around Citywest, home to the west Dublin accommodation centre for asylum seekers and Ukraine war refugees, advising that a protest was planned for that evening.
“We ask that everyone living in Citywest be back before 6.30pm,” wrote an Irish volunteer.
The same text was translated into Somali, Arabic, Pashto and Urdu – languages that reflected the broad mix of nationalities inside.
RM Block
Similar advice was being shared among Ireland’s Ukrainian population in an attempt to alert residents in the former Citywest hotel complex that unrest was expected.
Samir*, a Pakistani man who arrived in Ireland three months ago seeking asylum and lives in the Citywest hotel and conference centre complex, was in his room when staff raised a security alert.
He could hear shouts from a crowd walking up the hotel avenue. By 7.30pm the sounds of fireworks and smashing glass, accompanied by the roar of more than 1,000 people being pushed back by the Garda riot squad, was unmistakable.
“We felt anxious and confused,” he told The Irish Times. “I was especially worried about my friends who were outside.”
His friends were among the group of men picked up from surrounding areas by local volunteers who jumped in their cars once they heard the protest was turning violent.
The men were brought to a nearby safe house where they watched the violence unfold on TikTok, the social media platform, until 1am when it was finally deemed safe to return to Citywest.
“I felt really afraid when that violence started, but the kindness, care and support [of the volunteers] truly gave us strength,” said Samir.
“It was a frightening, dark night.”
He said his thoughts were with the 10-year-old Irish girl in State care who was allegedly sexually assaulted by a foreign man in an incident that led to the subsequent public disorder outside the centre on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
His thoughts were also with her family, he said.
“We are not here to take from anyone; we just want safety, peace and a chance to live a normal life. I hope people can see us as humans,” he said.
Samir is one of the more than 2,400 people living within the 6.7-hectare Citywest site purchased by the State in September for more than €148 million and now operating as a permanent international protection accommodation (IPAS) centre.
The Citywest transit hub provides accommodation for 460 adults seeking international protection, while separately there are about 800 asylum seekers, including more than 300 children, living in an IPAS centre adjacent to the Citywest hotel.
Some 1,200 Ukrainian beneficiaries of temporary protection (BOTPs), including more than 350 families with children, live in the Citywest hotel. Many of these are accommodated under the State’s 90-day policy, which was introduced in March 2024 in an effort to scale back the level of support offered to Ukrainian refugees.
Ukrainians with complex health needs, many of them elderly people who require access to Dublin hospitals, are accommodated for longer than three months at Citywest.
Ukrainian residents now feel “scared – plain and simple” following the violence, said Anatoliy Primakov, director of Ukrainian Action in Ireland.
“Families were told not to leave their rooms, not to go near windows; they were terrified. And they don’t know how long this is going to last,” he said.
“Let’s not forget why these vulnerable Ukrainians are here. These people have already suffered and came here seeking refuge.”
Pregnant asylum-seeking women are also among the Citywest site’s most vulnerable residents. They stay in the City Ark hotel where they link up with the Coombe hospital’s Daisy Clinic, which offers maternity and gynaecological supports throughout their pregnancy.
Many of the women arrive in Citywest from other IPAS centres because their pregnancies are considered complex and high risk. Some 58 women staying in the complex have given birth since January 2025, with another 10 women due to give birth before Christmas, according to data provided by a senior healthcare official working on site.
Some pregnant women arrived at the hotel this week, the day the violent protests broke out, she told The Irish Times.
“The migrant population in Citywest is certainly the place with the highest concentration of people with complex health needs,” she said, asking that her name not be disclosed.
“Twenty to 25 per cent of people in the hotel have two or more chronic health conditions. It’s a much older [demographic] profile, people are sicker here. If you look at it from a health management perspective it makes sense; all the major treatment centres are nearby.”
The work of health professionals travelling in and out of Citywest each day is becoming increasingly compromised, she said.
“We have had staff members attacked by right-wing groups, vandalising our cars, shouting at us. It’s really scary and depressing,” she said.
“Citywest is a fundamental resource and if we’re going to accept migrants, we need to have somewhere where people can arrive safely, be accommodated, assessed and receive appropriate supports.”
The State has been leasing Citywest since 2020, first as part of the national Covid-19 response, and since 2022 as a transit hub and accommodation centre for Ukrainians fleeing the war and for people seeking international protection.
Some local residents in nearby Saggart have opposed the use of the complex to accommodate foreign nationals and say the hotel should be returned to its original use.
A spokesman for the Department of Justice said it had carried out an “extensive engagement programme in the Saggart and Citywest area”. The site’s leisure centre would remain in operation, with a tender sought in the next 12 months for an operator, he said.
It’s understood the site’s Citywest transit hub also accommodates adult men who have been moved from the IPAS centres where they previously lived and are awaiting deportation from the State.
The Department of Justice spokesman said it was “not the case that the transit hub is primarily used to accommodate men with deportation orders” and that male IPs are also accommodated on the site.
When a person receives a formal notification of deportation, they are given a date by which they must leave the country. If they do not leave the State by this date, they must present at the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB), where arrangements are made for their removal from Ireland. It’s understood the men in the transit hub are relocated to Citywest at this point in the process.
A person who is the subject of a deportation order may be detained for up to eight weeks in a prescribed place of detention to ensure their removal from the State, according to the GNIB. These prescribed places are Mountjoy, Cloverhill and Wheatfield prisons in Dublin, Cork Prison, Limerick Prison and Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon, as well as all Garda stations.
The GNIB, which is responsible for carrying out deportations on behalf of Government, said arrangements for those who do not leave the State voluntarily after receiving a deportation order can be complex and “necessitate engagement with international embassies”.
Transporting people to certain countries can take time and be “multifaceted”, said a GNIB spokeswoman.
Civil war and political instability in some countries where airports are closed or co-operation with political regimes is not possible, can present logistical challenges around deportations.
This was the case with the 26-year-old foreign man accused of sexually assaulting a young girl in Saggart last week. He is before the courts and cannot be identified due to the nature of the charge against him.
Once travel arrangements are made, deportees are detained in advance of deportation.
Garda stations are not used as long-term immigration detention centres and “Citywest is not a detention centre”, said the spokeswoman.
In early October, Citywest became the second national location for processing international protection applications.
It joins the International Protection Office on Mount Street in Dublin city centre where staff have struggled to meet processing demands in recent years.
Families with children who arrive into the State seeking asylum are now brought directly to Citywest to make their application, along with applicants who arrive from the State’s “safe-countries-of-origin list”.
Some families are subsequently sent to IPAS centres elsewhere in Ireland, but others remain in the complex, which becomes their home.
Ronan Murphy, a local primary schoolteacher in Citywest, whose students include residents at the centre, said feeling safe at home and in the surrounding community was “essential for children’s healthy development” so “they can access learning”.
Staff where he works have focused this week on reassuring children that school “remains a safe place to be”. Two families in Citywest have not allowed their four children to attend school since the violence broke out, he said.
“Both families are afraid; they have not left the hotel grounds since this started. It is a fear of violence which is keeping the children home, their home being a hotel under siege,” he said.
The Ukrainian Action group is calling on Government to appoint a “figurehead for immigration who can advise and inform the public when misinformation prevails and protests turn violent”.
“We have this information vacuum that gets filled quickly with bad actors and exploited,” said Primakov.
“We need someone to calmly and confidently take control of the narrative. Ultimately, this is about societal problems like housing and healthcare which are not being addressed. And immigrants are being scapegoated.
[ Despite global headwinds, the Irish economy is projected to grow by almost 11%Opens in new window ]
“Are people right to be upset? Yes, things are not ideal in Ireland. But if we deport everybody tomorrow, will these problems just disappear? No.”
* Name has been changed to protect his identity
