Irish Examiner view: Security at Ipas centres needs review
Rioters set a garda van alight outside the Citywest Ipas centre in Saggart, Dublin, last month. Picture: Padraig O'Reilly
The grainy CCTV images of a hooded man kicking in the front door of a sanctuary home for immigrants to this country and setting fire to the stairs, while women and young children slept upstairs, has to be a wake-up call.
That four terrified children and an adult had to be rescued from the top floor of the blazing building in what was clearly an attempted arson, can only add to the broad disquiet caused by this incident.
To any normal human being — Irish or otherwise — the thought of setting ablaze a property which had been designated as a safe place for those seeking succour and refuge, is nothing short of an abomination.
That someone — anyone — thought it a good idea or a good way of highlighting their anti-immigrant opinions indicates clearly that something is radically askew within our society.
To terrorise innocent people in this way is almost beyond comprehension and there is little by way of consolation in the fact that the forces of law will inevitably catch up with the person responsible and mete out suitable punishment.
The chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council, Nick Henderson, said there have been more than 30 attacks against locations proposed to be accommodation centres.
More worryingly, he said while there has been a pattern of attacks ongoing for several years, it now seems to be “crossing a Rubicon” to attacking areas where people are living.
Given that we now have more than 300 centres across the country, he called for an extensive security review of International Protection Accommodation Service (Ipas) centres to be carried out.
“There should be a general security audit or analysis and trying to identify where the centres are that are most at risk. I think it would also have to be done in an appropriate and sensitive way,” he said.
Minister of state for justice, home affairs, and migration Colm Brophy confirmed an urgent security review of all Ipas centres will now take place in the wake of an arson attack in Drogheda.
Welcome words at a time when firm action is needed. What the Government does next will be rightly watched and scrutinised.
All too rarely in Irish public life is someone’s passing met with such unanimous sadness and unbridled sorrow as was the death yesterday of Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, a true champion of those marginalised by our society.
Sr Stan, as she was universally known, was so much more than a nun; she was a force of nature whose commitment to the poor of our nation, as well as Travellers, gay people, and many others outside of the realm of societal norms went far beyond the call of her vocation.
From setting up rural co-operatives to support disabled people, abused females, or Travellers’ groups back in the 1970s to the foundation of Focus Ireland — the biggest voluntary housing agency in the country — the former Treasa Kennedy, from Lispole, Co Kerry, was to become something of a national monument to Christian values.
However, she did not allow her devotion to God and all His children to silence her voice. Her criticisms of the Catholic Church reflected a broader intellect than merely serving its institutions.
Sr Stan was a vocal critic of the Church’s stance on mandatory celibacy for priests and nuns, was a huge advocate for the equality of women in the Church, and also supported a yes vote in the 2015 referendum on same-sex marriage.
Yet her defiance of Church doctrine seemed to merely make her devotion to God, her religion, and her work all the more determined, even in the face of allegations from some quarters who considered her too uppity or outspoken.
She also strongly defended her colleagues in the Sisters of Charity organisation to which she belonged over abuse directed at them regarding the proposal to site the National Maternity Hospital at St Vincent’s hospital in Dublin.
She was proud to have been described by the late taoiseach Charles Haughey as being the “most intransigent woman” he had ever met and often agreed that her legendary stubbornness was because working for the poor was often difficult and humiliating.
The tributes flooding forth to Sr Stan and her work reflected the respect and admiration of a nation. Hers was a life of commitment and dedication to social justice and, as such, she was an example to us all.
For those thousands of people in households across Cork whose lives have been blighted for years by the contamination of drinking water, the legal challenge against the Environmental Protection Agency is both welcome and timely.
There have been conflicting opinions about the health of the city’s water supplies for years. in the city have been ongoing to for many years. For some, there is seemingly no end in sight when it comes to getting a clean supply.
With the city’s drinking water supply flowing through iron pipes at least a century old, the fragile nature of the system has long been known. Yet, for many, the dream of having clean, usable drinking water is still little more than a fantasy.
And part of the problem is that upgrading the system creates difficulties too and legal filings in the case against the EPA accuse the authority of repeated breaches of the regulatory threshold for manganese, for example.
The EPA is accused of neglecting its supervisory responsibility for the drinking water supplies in Cork. But whether or not this latest legal challenge over water quality will actually improve the lot of so many households remains to be seen.
In this day and age, that should not be the case.
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