{"id":73285,"date":"2025-09-19T11:10:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T11:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/73285\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T11:10:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T11:10:24","slug":"newrys-sanctuary-city-madness-gript","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/73285\/","title":{"rendered":"Newry\u2019s Sanctuary City Madness\u00a0 – Gript"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, Newry, Mourne and Down District Council decided to become the latest of the UK\u2019s Cities of <\/a>Sanctuary<\/a><\/strong>.<\/strong> According to the NGO that is behind the initiative, Newry becomes the third such sanctuary in the north alongside Belfast and Causeway Borough.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A sanctuary city is where it is proposed to provide all asylum seekers with accommodation and services regardless of their legal status. Which in the United States has involved designated sanctuaries refusing to hand over people subject to deportation orders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cities of Sanctuary lists over 100 affiliated groups of which around 70 are actual elected City or district councils and includes major cities such as Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester.\u00a0 The entire country of Wales is allegedly a \u2018Nation of Sanctuary\u2019 but remains an \u201cambition\u201d as it has no legal status.<\/p>\n

It should be noted that many of the groups are just that \u2013 local activist groups \u2013 and that Belfast<\/a><\/strong> for example has not been designated as a City of Sanctuary by the elected City Council . Nor has the Borough of Causeway made such a decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, across England, Scotland and Wales only the elected councils of Sheffield, Bradford, Liverpool, Lambeth and Birmingham had passed a similar motion. So, Newry can claim the accolade of being the first such in Ireland and the sixth in the UK, as it remains almost 30 years after the Good Friday Agreement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There has been strong local opposition to the proposal in Newry, mostly from local nationalist residents, but it had overwhelming support from the nationalist elected members of the Council on which Sinn F\u00e9in is the largest party and, along with the SDLP, was the main component of the majority that voted for the proposal.<\/p>\n

One of the Newry marches<\/a><\/strong> against the proposal for a Sanctuary City drew a crowd estimated at around 1,000. It was described in some quarters as \u201cthe first nationalist anti-emigration march in the north.\u201d Although that opposition is not reflected in the nationalist representation on the Council, it undermines the narrative that concerns over immigration are confined to unionist and loyalist communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Declan Murphy<\/a><\/strong> who proposed the motion claimed that \u201cJoining this network sends a clear message that our district stands with those in need. We won\u2019t allow fear or division to define our future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doire Finn of the SDLP was equally enthusiastic and she stated that \u201c\u201dThe Council of Sanctuary network will position the council to be at the forefront of best practice across the UK and Ireland, aligning it with other leading organisations in Northern Ireland that have already received sanctuary awards, such as Queen\u2019s University, Belfast, Belfast, Health and Social Care Trust and over 42 schools.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In some ways the decision is no more than a gesture as Councillor Finn said that last year there were only 63 registered asylum seekers in the Council District area.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, protestors have claimed that designating Newry as a sanctuary will attract greater numbers and add to already strained demands on public provision.<\/p>\n

Figures published in June by the Stormont Department of Communities<\/a><\/strong> showed that Newry and Mourne had both the longest mean waiting time for social housing,\u00a0 at four years and nine months, and 3,953 on its list.\u00a0 The overall waiting list under the Sinn F\u00e9in\/DUP led Executive was 48,325.<\/p>\n

Newry, despite all of those local problems, has nonetheless become the standard bearer for the sanctuary movement. One wonders if this will inspire other elected councils in the north and perhaps in the southern jurisdiction to follow suit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is a City of Dublin Sanctuary<\/a><\/strong> group listed among its affiliates by the UK NGO. It is a registered charity, but there has been no attempt yet to follow the British and American left in having the capital city made such a place of welcome. The Irish group is registered as Places of Sanctuary and its address is c\/o the Irish Refugee Council.<\/p>\n

According to its CRO records it was founded in 2016. Last year it had an income of \u20ac304,129 of which 99.75% came from the state.\u00a0 It received a paltry \u20ac750 in voluntary donations. Its biggest patron was the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Department bunged Places of Sanctuary\u00a0 \u20ac130,870 of your tax Euros through its International Protection Integration Fund which is specifically entered in the accounts as going towards\u201cdirect costs and wages.\u201d Which amounted to \u20ac142,057 last year for its four employees.<\/p>\n

Its directors include Gerry Hassett, a former director of Irish Life; Veronica Crosbie who lectures in Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University;\u00a0 Martin Meagher, who is a former director of Carlow Chambers of Commerce, and Jean-Pierre Eyanga Ekumeloko a former director of the National Consultative Committee on Racism.<\/p>\n

I was intrigued by this group of whom I had never before heard tell of and figuring that they would be on a buzz after the Newry decision I contacted them to ask them if there were similarly advanced plans to have Dublin Councils do the same.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

They must have been too busy motoring around (\u20ac22,996 that cost in 2024) to \u201cnature and heritage\u201d stuff (expenses of \u20ac558) to find time as I have received no response from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Monday, Newry, Mourne and Down District Council decided to become the latest of the UK\u2019s Cities of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,50213,13,14,6,56,11,12,15,16,11605,5,7,8,1294,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-73285","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-cities-of-sanctuary","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-immigration","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-newry","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}