An attempt to set up Ireland's first anti-immigration organisation dissolved into chaos last night as two separate groups of protesters disrupted the launch meeting of the Immigration Control Platform in Ennis.
The 20 or so members of the public who attended the meeting were easily outnumbered by more than 50 protesters from various political, human rights and refugee groups, who claim the new organisation is racist.
The organisation's founder, Ms Aine Ni Chonaill, barely had time to explain her opposition to asylum-seekers coming to Ireland and to immigration from other EU states before the protesters filed into the hotel room hired for the occasion.
The manager of the Irish Refugee Council's local office, Ms Orla Ni Eili, accused Ms Ni Chonaill of abusing her position by choosing Ennis, where there was a "vulnerable" population of asylum-seekers, as the venue for the launch.
Other protesters compared the meeting to the beginnings of the Nazi party under Adolf Hitler.
But Ms Ni Chonaill, a secondary school teacher from west Cork, said her organisation would be "an aid to democracy". There was no body pressing for tighter immigration controls, but at least a dozen pushing for a "generous" policy towards asylum-seekers, she claimed.
The "influx" into rural Ireland from "crowded European cities" was creating "another kind of refugee". Ms Ni Chonaill said that having seen the film The Full Monty at Christmas, she felt it was "no wonder they were invading west Cork when you look at postindustrial Sheffield".
Shortly after this, the stage was invaded by protesters from Anti-Fascist Action, who stood in a line in front of the speakers.
One of them accused Ms Ni Chonaill of being an admirer of the French right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen and drew parallels between the Platform and the Blueshirts. One of his colleagues took photographs of those who had come for the meeting.
At one point, disagreements arose between the two groups of protesters. Those from the IRC and Amnesty International resolved to leave the room and called on Anti-Fascist Action to allow the meeting to continue. However, the latter group refused to move.
A member of the audience told the departing protesters to "go back to the jungle". Another man countered by saying the meeting had brought shame on the Banner County, which had been home to Moosajee Bhamjee and Eamon de Valera, neither of whom could be described as 100 per cent Irish.
Commenting on the meeting, the director of the UCC-based Irish Centre for Migration Studies, Mr Piaras Mac Einri, said the new organisation was "implicitly racist and xenophobic, out of touch with the views of the great majority of Irish people and deeply insulting to immigrants of all kinds, many of whom make a major contribution to Irish life".
The Association of Asylumseekers and Refugees compared the start of the new group to the birth of Nazism. "This platform is an abuse of the traditional Irish values of compassion and hospitality. This cannot be the message of this nation to refugees who came to Ireland in search of protection and safe refuge."
A spokesman, Mr Khalid Ibrahim, said there were 4,000 asylum-seekers in Ireland. "This is not a flood or influx. It is a very tiny number compared to the 30 million refugees worldwide."
