EZRA LEVANT ｜ Ireland belongs to the Irish people, not 'bogus refugees'
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Summary
In the heart of Ireland, a 4-star hotel with a golf course and a country club is being transformed into a refugee camp, housing hundreds of thousands of refugees. This in a town that doesn t even have 200 people left in it.
Transcript
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tonight the most extreme immigration story you've ever heard it's july 18th and this is the ezra
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i am in the heart of ireland about two hours south of dublin behind me if you can see it
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is a mighty castle later converted into a church it's called the rock of cashel and for centuries
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it was the seat of the irish kings we're living in a land of history of culture of religion of
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language the irish indigenous people go back to time immemorial and most of ireland still lives
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in that way dublin is a modern metropolitan city but in the small town of dundrum which is in the
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county called tipperary well there's about 175 200 people who live there and although they're
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modern progressive uh fully high-tech irish like anyone else it's a small community where everyone
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knows each other and in some ways it's how ireland i expect has been for centuries it's a small place
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but there is a local community center namely the hotel which now also has a golf course and a country
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club it's a place where locals would go for meals to play golf it was a meeting place for the community
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many weddings were held there the hub of the community and a source of economic opportunity
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for the community making tourism part of the local economy but then the hotel was sold to him an american
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investor and then the irish government came with a massive contract for this american investor
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offering him untold millions of dollars if he were to transform this uh hotel which itself is over a hundred
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years old into a refugee camp i say again this four-star hotel with a gorgeous immaculate golf course
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being transformed in the heart heart of celtic ireland into a refugee camp is astonishing now by the way
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there have been some ukrainian families living there and the folks in the local community tell me
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they're actually fairly well integrated they're not a threat or a danger the kids are going into
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the local schools and it's manageable but we're told that those ukrainians are being evicted and that
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the hotel which currently has a certain number of ukrainians is going to massively increase the
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numbers of beds available one of the numbers that is being reported in the mainstream press
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is to 280 people this in a town that doesn't even have 200 people but what we learned today is that
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the capacity of the hotel is in fact closer to 500 people and that under irish law every one of those
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500 could apply to bring in five other family members in other words there could be a doorway for
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three thousand refugee migrants or ipas as they're called in ireland to come and stay in that
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once central communal irish place of the dundrum hotel we came down here first of all because we
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couldn't believe it second of all we wanted to get the facts now i've written an email to the owner of the
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hotel asking him questions about everything from the terms of his contract and why it's secret and
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why there's been no consultation whatsoever with the community to details about how many migrants
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will come and from where and for how long do they expect to be holed up in the hotel i haven't heard
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back yet but if i do i'll let you know it's astonishing to me that in any place in ireland if you seek to
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build a building dig a mine open a business almost anything you seek to do there is a planning process
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where other effective people get to feedback what their impact will be you can't just build an office
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tower in the middle of nowhere what about the traffic what about the parking what about the noise
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can you build something too close to a school these are the questions that are dealt with by
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municipalities all the time with zoning laws and public hearings that's the meat and potatoes work
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of any town council really in the world but this decision to turn this local hotel into a refugee camp
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is not made locally it's a national decision and it is being imposed on the local community
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i asked repeatedly the protesters about town hall meetings or information sessions they say that
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they have been none there is no political process and there is no legal process open to them
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to ask questions and get information let alone challenge and feedback there is no back and forth
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there is no debate it is being opposed in an authoritarian manner from the top down that's bad enough when
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it's in a larger city like dublin where we were in the neighborhood of kulak and police charged
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protesters and pepper sprayed them and there was altercation and some of the young kids threw rocks
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it's bad enough in a large city like that but if this plan goes ahead and if little dundrum a town of
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200 now has hundreds and potentially thousands of foreign migrants it's no longer dundrum and i wonder what
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the people who lived so proudly in that fortress behind us that seat of kings for centuries what they would say
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they fought off invaders they fought to impose a rule of law on this land to create a nation
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and for centuries it existed but now the same irish the indigenous people
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are being i don't know what the word is invaded is the wrong word because that implies that the government
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in ireland is resisting it what do you call it when a town of 200 people
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has 280 people of a foreign nation added to it the rumors are that they would be from somalia or
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nigeria but we don't know where they would be from when i was in dublin a few months ago and i went asking
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migrants where they were from they told me answers like pakistan and palestine they were all single
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military-aged men will it be military-aged men will it be families the local community has not been
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told it's astonishing to me that in a country that calls itself a democracy they don't have the
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information let alone the democratic right to challenge that information to use that information
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to have their say over the course of the next half hour you can see what i saw in dundrum
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we'll talk to one of the local mothers who has become a spokesman in the fight back against this plan
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we'll talk to someone whose family built up the hotel in the 70s and 80s and is heartbroken to see
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what's become of it and we'll show you briefly the american owner of the hotel speeding in his bmw i
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waved at him he waved as he ran in i wrote to him asking for an interview why would he give me an
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interview he doesn't give interviews even to his own townspeople by the way one of my questions
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to the owner was does he even live in the village himself i'm here in ireland because i find their
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immigration policy absolutely astonishing and that's news in itself what's going on in a fellow
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democracy but it's also a warning of how things can go in any country that puts the globalist ideology
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of mass migration over the sovereign decisions of local citizens these citizens i spoke to some of them
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in tears have no rights whatsoever we heard about irish homeless not having a place to stay irish
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homeless irish people living below the poverty line imagine bringing people from somalia to the front of
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the line putting them in a four-star hotel and telling the local people they have no say in it
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here's the rest of our program in dundrum uh tipperary ireland
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fiona i'm azra levant from rebel news tell me a little bit about yourself
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and my name is fiona kennedy i'm a very ordinary uh mother and i live here locally in dundrum and
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i'm here with a group of people we're the most ordinary people that you could possibly meet
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and we find ourselves in an extraordinary situation and um really we're standing to
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protect our hotel our beautiful hotel here dundrum house hotel our golf club and our community
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yeah i had never heard of dundrum until yesterday i looked it up and it only has
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about 200 people and i understand that this facility this gorgeous beautiful hotel and country club
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could theoretically sleep up to 500 people what do you know about the contract that the owner of
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this facility has to house asylum seekers and refugees what information do you have
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well unfortunately we very little um information now we have submitted a request for information
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under the freedom of information act and i'm not sure if the time on that is up but we've had
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no information back yet we would like to get sight of the contract but nobody's forthcoming on that
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and and have you had has the owner of the hotel been communicative at all
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not not in the slightest no he hasn't he hasn't engaged with us at all and what is the government
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entity that's involved is it just the national government or are there any local governments
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involved well really it's this has been driven by national government the department of integration
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and um there are we do have local government here in tipperary in ireland as well and we have some
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local councillors who are working on our behalf working with us we have um one uh local uh tipperary
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td member of member of our parliament um just to translate it to canadian and here here is actually
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the the owner is just about to pass the owner is just i'll have to go and talk to him what's his name
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his name is jeff jeff leo yeah and i understand he's from away is that right yeah i i understand he's
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american i've actually never met jeff um so that's my first time seeing him that hasn't been a photograph
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um he certainly sped by yeah that has been that hasn't he hasn't had any community town halls he
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hasn't said has he sat down with the media at all not to my knowledge he hasn't i'm guessing you would
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know we would know and he hasn't engaged with the community at all we've had two public meetings both
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very heavily attended and did he send anyone to those no he didn't i find that astonishing yeah he
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was invited how was he invited by email by letter not sure because i wasn't involved he must have
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known about it i mean he's he's the center of this whole project 100 he knew about it you know but
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he he didn't come but yeah the only time we see him actually is when he's speeding in or out of the
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gates yeah he certainly came by quite quickly so right now in in this facility i understand in fact
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i saw with my own eyes there are some ukrainians can you tell me about who's here now the exact numbers
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we're not sure of uh there was an initial contract um in place to house we understand in the region of
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270 ukrainians and those people they were welcomed into the village with open arms men and women and
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kids like were they families or they were they just military age men no there were there were family
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groups and they were welcomed into the into the area and the children are going to school locally
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uh people are working in the community and uh they are very supportive of what we are trying to do
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here they now are being um i i mentioned that the the contract it was a temporary accommodation
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um contract that was entered into to house ukrainians who were fleeing from war and um but that situation
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that was fine because that was always going to be a temporary arrangement but now we have a situation
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where uh there's going to be a rolling contract to provide accommodation for ipas i heard that the ukrainians are
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being evicted is that true yeah we understand that they have been told and that they need to be out
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the information we were given is by the second week in august now we can't we can't um speak to the the
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the accuracy of any of those reports because we're skeptical of everything we hear because we don't know if
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if somebody's saying oh to give us a false sense of security that nothing is going to happen here
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until the second week in august we are behaving every day as if an arrival of ipas is imminent
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ipa is what you call a protection applicants we would call that refugee claimants in can't yeah well
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well here the the um here the uh ukrainians would be deemed refugees in that they were fleeing a war
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situation in their country and but the asylum seekers it's a it's a different this that's where
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they fall into under uh international protection applicants now where would the proposed ipas or
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asylum seekers where would they be coming from look we don't know because we we don't know anything
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we're not being told anything we're hearing of course reports from different parts of the country
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um about they're coming from here they're everywhere we don't really want to speak to that because we
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don't know and i just want to be really really clear for us this is not a race issue at all for us
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this is a services issue you mentioned there the um the population of dundrum in the last census i
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understand the population of the village is 221 people there's a bed capacity inside these gates for
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in around 550 people and that alone doubles the population of of the village and if you take into
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account the fact that every person in there can apply under the family reunification option that's
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open to them to have six more family members come and join them here in their new lives in ireland
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the 550 people there could turn into 3 000 people very very quickly and it's overwhelming we've got
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one doctor in the village he has said he won't be taking any anybody on he doesn't have the capacity
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the i understand there was a doctor in a neighboring town he was look providing care to the ukrainians he
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said that when the ipas come in he's not taking it he doesn't have the capacity and the schools are
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under pressure everything is under under pressure here um and we just really want our hotel back to
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be honest with you we want look we're very compassionate people the irish people are very
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compassionate people um but we feel that our compassion and our generosity is being taken
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advantage of by a government who are not enforcing um our immigration laws uh to begin with how are people
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getting on a plane with documents and then managing to come through with no documents it's a farce it's
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an absolute joke and that's the first thing in my opinion that should be addressed if somebody gets
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off a plane you cannot get on without documents if somebody gets off a plane without documents they
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should be immediately sent back to the country from where they came that's that's my opinion you
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mentioned your local td or what we would call a local mp member parliament is supportive i'm going to
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challenge you on that i haven't heard a single member of the irish parliament speak out against
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that is he supportive when he's just speaking in whispers with you or is he supportive publicly no
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you can challenge away ezra the man i'm talking about is matty mcgrath and he is a td here in
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tipperary and he has not only has he been to the gates here several times he has stood up in the
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our irish parliament and he has challenged the government okay fair play okay good to hear it he is
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what party is he with he's an independent well that's why isn't it isn't that and was he elected
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as an independent elected as an independent well that's a recommendation for independence isn't it
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can i just say the ridicule that he faces matty is a country person like we're all ordinary country
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people he's a country accent people ridicule him they make fun of him but he is a man of the utmost
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integrity and he he is probably the only person that we currently have um who has the courage to
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speak out and there is a local counselor as well uh liam brown and he is a man of courage also he
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is standing with us and he is fighting for us so we're very lucky to have both of those but as far
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as we're concerned the rest of them have sold us out now if there is work going on the background
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that they're not prepared to speak of i'll always i'm an eternal optimist i would hope for that
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but we we have seen nothing what i've learned from other places newtown mount kennedy kulak in dublin
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is that this is a announced to the local community as a fait accompli there's no consultation no town
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halls it if you were to build a skyscraper here if you were to build a giant wind turbine if you were
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to build a mine in the ground you would have years of environmental and parking and traffic and
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congestion impact reports everything and they'd be looking at the impact on services in the community
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environmental impacts economic impacts i mean the the the one of the huge impacts on the village
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dundrum was always a thriving village a real economic hub i mean i can't even tell you the
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number of businesses all doing trade all doing well and um because that's when the hotel was in the
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hotel so it's a beautiful and the golf course is one of the most beautiful i've ever seen
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will the golf course remain open if there's hundreds of uh refugees in there it's very hard to know
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because we don't know we don't the problem imagine it well we don't we don't know we don't know but
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and that guy who sped by in his bmw is probably not stopping to tell you well no we're not hearing
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anything direct directly from him i can't suppose to know what's in his head but and i won't speak
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about him directly but what i would say is if i was somebody who um had a property and was prepared
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to sell the soul of my community for money this is all about money it's greed pure and simple
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and then i would shoehorn people into every uh available available place and what a disgrace
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it's an absolute disgrace as i drove in i went by the rock of cashel which was just so stunning and
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i looked it up and you know it was the seat of kings and it was saint patrick himself was uh
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said to have gone through there it's just majestic and i think of the people who would have
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been in there and their hopes for ireland and if and correct my history if i'm wrong if king angus
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if the other irish leaders of the past were to see what is being done here for a few pieces of
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silver i think they would be furious i think they would take out their swords and shields and march
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on this place i think for for a few millions of dollars this ancient community is being sold out
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and it disgusts me that's exactly what's been happening this community has been sold out the
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irish people are being sold out we're not being listened to the politicians appear to have forgotten
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they work for us what can you do is there a legal mechanism do you have a lawyer who's
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examined perhaps the law is there some way to appeal this i'm being told there is not
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but have you investigated that do you have any firepower yeah we do um i i don't want to say
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too much about what's going on because this we're in at a very delicate stage of this but um for as
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much as anyone driving past will see a presence at the gate we also have uh teams in the background
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and they are working to look at the legalities of of contracts and arrangements and agreements that
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have been entered into um so for instance we we we mentioned there the the contract to house on a
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temporary basis the ukrainians um and then with a lot of some of the ukrainians are moving on
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themselves a lot of them maybe are going home and for whatever reason and uh so so now apparently a
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new hybrid contract is being entered into or has been entered into we don't know because we no one
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is showing us paperwork um but what that says is that two communities they they cannot mix so for
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so there's so the government itself thinks i've heard two countries mentioned somalia and nigeria
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and again listen i i don't have any better information than you so you correct me if i'm wrong
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so they're moving out the ukrainians because they don't think that they can coexist with this new
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community wherever they're from and and and you suspect they're from from africa is you have any any
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intel at all i heard somalia nigeria but that's probably just gossip a lot of that probably is
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gossip and the truth is we don't know but i want to stress for for us here as a group it doesn't
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matter where they're from they're if they're incompatible if the government itself thinks
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they're incompatible with ukrainians look it's the government will have to speak to that i i can't
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say we know if they're doing you mentioned that there's moms dads and kids you mentioned that
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some of the ukrainian kids go to school you and i i seem to hear that you're saying that ukrainians
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have more or less integrated in the community is that correct that is correct well then let me ask
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you do we know anything about the nature of who will be in here in this next way will they be
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families mom dad kid or will they be single men will they be single military age men which is what i
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see when i look around the center of dublin and and what they're worried about happening in kulak
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do we know anything about the character of the next community that is being foisted on dundrum
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well that that's really the the nub of the problem that we don't know who is coming in
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i do want to make one point ezra i'm a mother of four sons so i don't assume that just because
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someone is male that they will be of a particular disposition whatever age they are and i'll be very
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upset if someone assumed gosh there's four boys there they must be violent they must be whatever
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so i i will not stand i won't stand for that but our problem is that we don't know who's coming in
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and just from our look we've all seen the same reports that you have seen the reality is that
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we don't know and that's why we are fearful because if what is playing out everywhere plays
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out here in dundrum we may find ourselves in that situation well that's the thing you don't know and so
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the mind imagines and listen i'm a man myself and i understand what you're saying about you you cannot
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cast aspersions on somebody when you bring people in from a different culture that has different
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approaches to women to a woman out on a bicycle or jogging there are places in the world where that
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is considered morally and ethically inappropriate there there are different i i would imagine that
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the ukrainian refugees here have some cultural overlap and if you don't even know who's coming in
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you don't even know what the challenge is i find that astonishing what will happen if one day or it
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might be the dead of what you just said go ahead if you don't mind um yeah as i said i'm a mother of
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four sons and i've made this point here before let's just and because i'm an eternal optimist let's say
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a busload of people arrives and let's say it is all men let's say they come here and they are fleeing
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something um and let's say they all by circumstance found themselves on this one bus into a country and
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a place they've never been before and they then are expected to live in harmony now those four sons i
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mentioned earlier if i left them on their own in a room for an hour they are brothers and they love
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each other but war would break out so my concern is if you are shoehorning people who don't necessarily
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know each other into a compact area and expect them to live in harmony we're fooling ourselves
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that's just not going to happen and that our things spill over and they don't have language skills and
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they probably don't have job skills and if they're allowed to work what are they going to work and if
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they're not allowed to work what are they going to do all day and it's taking an average of 18 months
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we understand to process somebody's application for asylum to determine if if they they are eligible
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to be given asylum that's 18 months where you you don't know who's living in your community
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and you know and i made the point to somebody before you know i moved into this community nobody
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knew who i was i'm not from here and people could say well sure fiona you rocked on here and no one
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knew who you were and no one gave you a hard time about being here but if anyone had come to my door
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and said sorry we do need to verify who you are i can show my passport i can show my driving license
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and i can show who i am i've got my papers i've got my documents people do not get on planes without
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documents how could they come out the other side there's no planes from mogadishu to uh dublin
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there's no planes from um lagos to to like they come from an intermediary country where we know
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they're coming through the uk as well right and the uk i've been there it's not a war zone there's
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no threat to anyone these folks are shopping around how can you deny it what do you mean shopping
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around shopping around for i mean if they're in france if they're in the uk and they choose to come to
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ireland listen i just spent some time walking through these grounds i would move here from
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canada it's so gorgeous that's what i mean by shopping around you could be a refugee claimant in
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france or in the uk but why not come to the softest touch why not come for the suckers the suckers who
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will abide anything put you up in a luxury four-star hotel on a golf course and let you bring five
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family members over i love the irish people but your government is probably the stupidest government
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in the west look at they're selling us out there's no you won't get any argument from any of us here
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they are selling us out um i think we're we are suckers to put up with what we've put up with
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and we've got a housing crisis in our in ireland there's a health care crisis in ireland
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i heard a radio interview yesterday there was a poor mother on her little boy has scoliosis and
00:26:24.540
he's he's gone so our our t-shock our prime minister stood up in our doll our parliament
00:26:29.980
and said that no child with scoliosis would wait longer than more than six months for an operation
00:26:35.640
and this child now his mother is fearful that he's reached the point where he cannot be helped
00:26:40.060
because he's had to wait so long you know we are suckers for putting putting up with it and
00:26:44.720
you know we are suckers if we don't hold the government accountable i don't even blame the
00:26:49.520
people coming in to be honest with you i blame the government for not enforcing our immigration laws
00:26:53.900
and the amounts of money that they're paying to people who are providing this accommodation
00:26:57.820
is outrageous we're taxpayers we're working our fingers to the bone and we've never had as little
00:27:03.100
to show for it and uh you know if they were to if they were to have the money that there are
00:27:09.420
drastically reduce the money that they're paying people to offer this accommodation i'd love to see
00:27:13.640
how generous these property owners would be in that instance or even if they made them pay tax on it
00:27:18.620
well fiona i want to apply for refugee status because i would live on this golf course in this
00:27:24.560
paradise for 18 months or how long i could get away with it yeah well what i'd say about that is if you
00:27:30.040
do do it soon and enjoy the golf course because our fear is that there there may not be a golf course
00:27:36.540
for finish because one of the the the the points i said earlier if i if i was prepared to sell my soul
00:27:42.060
for money there's an awful lot of land attached to that golf course we see modular homes going up
00:27:47.120
in places in ireland who's to say that don drum isn't next last question for you so you have an
00:27:52.700
encampment here you have about a half a dozen people at this moment i imagine the crowd waxes and wanes
00:27:57.660
maybe even have people here overnight but let's say one night at 2 a.m a big coach bus pulls up with
00:28:04.540
50 souls in it from who knows where and it approaches the gates what happens then i mean
00:28:10.920
what it's it's a moral statement it's a political statement that you're here but
00:28:16.840
they might speed through just as quick as the proprietor did well look i mean i'm sure you
00:28:23.280
won't um you won't be insulted if i say we're going to keep our powder dry in that one we're not going
00:28:27.800
to announce what our plans may or may not be the reality of the situation is we probably don't fully
00:28:32.560
fully know ourselves none of us has ever been in a situation like this before but i want to
00:28:37.060
reiterate the point that we are peaceful protest we've been peaceful from the start and we are
00:28:41.420
we are resolved to be peaceful throughout we've seen and we've seen how things flare up in other
00:28:46.580
communities it hasn't that approach has not worked anywhere else i don't see how it's going to approach
00:28:51.420
how it's going to to work here in dundrum and we will just keep keep fighting and we keep working
00:28:56.880
away in the background and um you know but whatever happens we're not giving up on this we're not
00:29:02.360
giving up on a hotel we want our hotel back we want to bring dundrum back to life and we want to
00:29:06.760
restore dundrum as a destination not a place with tumbleweed in the village that people just drive
00:29:11.580
through on their way to somewhere else thanks so much for for talking with us and educating us
00:29:17.160
and we're going to keep an eye on dundrum and what happens here i won't lie to you fiona i'm pessimistic
00:29:25.260
because i've seen the government's iron resolve i've seen how they've denounced other as you say
00:29:33.240
severely normal or ordinary people they denounce anyone who's worried about their community they
00:29:38.780
call them names they call them racist they call them i don't know it's just far right whatever that
00:29:45.160
means we've been called all of those names but we know who we are you know we're good people we're
00:29:50.500
honest people we're decent people we're just people who want to live our lives in the community that we
00:29:54.620
chose to live in and um that's really what what we want and maybe somewhere that you know if we do
00:30:01.280
have a family celebration or a family um a sad occasion that we have got somewhere to go we want
00:30:06.260
to bring back the the hub of the village this hotel was the jewel in west tipperary and we want to bring
00:30:10.980
and we we actually want the the man who owns it to fulfill his his uh promises to restore the hotel
00:30:18.140
upgrade the golf course although it's already magnificent you saw it yourself bring the pool back
00:30:22.700
into use the leisure center is still in in use and um there was talk of a distillery there as well
00:30:28.880
this place can be absolutely magnificent and if there is a hotel you're out there watching this
00:30:32.620
you've heard ezra say this is a beautiful place a beautiful place to live lovely people the nicest
00:30:37.960
people you'll meet anywhere and if you've got a few bob in your pocket and you want to buy a hotel
00:30:42.160
you'll be guaranteed of our support every friday and saturday night if needs be
00:30:45.760
i tell you i come from a beautiful place alberta canada we think of bamf and lake louise
00:31:02.560
i've been to some beautiful places in the world including davos switzerland when we covered the world
00:31:07.500
economic forum but i have to say walking around the grounds of this hotel and country club and golf
00:31:14.540
club in dundrum ireland it's achingly beautiful it reminds me of the poem by the japanese haiku writer
00:31:23.400
basho who said even in kyoto hearing the cuckoo cry i long for kyoto even when he was there he missed it
00:31:30.660
and that's how i felt walking through this it's an impossible beauty and you ache for it and even
00:31:37.300
though i've never been here before and even though i'm here now i feel nostalgic for it your family
00:31:43.380
once owned this and i can only imagine the love you feel for this place yeah um i have they're nice
00:31:51.920
words by the way because i have a huge connection with this uh with the grounds here with the house
00:31:59.220
itself i grew up here pretty much um my parents bought this uh this place um when i was born the
00:32:09.160
year i was born 1978 and they opened it up as a hotel three years later so it's been in my life from a
00:32:19.060
very um early age and all of my family we worked and lived pretty much lived here um my parents worked
00:32:29.360
very very hard to keep it open as a beautiful hotel um my dad established the grounds as a golf course
00:32:38.040
um during that time as well yeah it's it was our lives i heard that it's the used to be a place
00:32:46.040
where weddings and the grounds are spectacular picturesque i could imagine every weekend there
00:32:51.580
would be a wedding here oh yeah weddings were huge here um because yeah obviously aesthetically
00:32:59.020
beautiful but also there was always a great sense of family within the walls of dundrum house all the
00:33:06.320
people who worked there um you know it was it was wonderful to grow up there
00:33:11.480
and it was from what i heard it was not just a meeting place and a beautiful place aesthetically
00:33:20.260
but it was a hub of economic activity jobs not just jobs for people on the grounds but little
00:33:27.180
contracts in town yeah hugely like so you would have been talking about the 80s and the 90s the 80s
00:33:33.780
were a time where people didn't actually have a huge amount people were happy but had didn't have a
00:33:40.100
whole lot um community was really really important really really strong we were there for each other
00:33:46.880
everybody who worked there you know were able to uh raise their families from that um lots of us went
00:33:55.280
through college uh earning our keep there um there was always i i don't think anyone would disagree with
00:34:03.460
the fact that people who worked there we all felt like family like look there's always ups and downs
00:34:10.540
in any situation but i have to say i learned so much from from being part of dundrum house hotel as it
00:34:18.620
was now it feels disconnected now there's secrecy not family now there's backroom deals with the
00:34:28.800
government no scrutiny no open house we saw the owner speed in today didn't stop hasn't made himself
00:34:36.820
available is taking this beautiful place and is ringing it out for money selling selling it not to
00:34:45.200
the local community but selling it to the politicians for their own uses for mass immigration how do you
00:34:50.700
feel about that deeply disappointed deeply deeply disappointed with what's going on nationwide um we are
00:34:59.180
just one of many communities dealing with this this place here dundrum house has still got huge
00:35:06.580
potential to provide uh jobs for our community to provide a place for people to come and stay
00:35:14.420
and enjoy themselves and go back and tell other people about it uh dundrum is a beautiful beautiful place
00:35:22.000
um i love it very much um it's very sad that the government are doing this to the people of ireland
00:35:30.800
that we have to stand here for weeks on end um it's
00:35:38.040
it feels like an invasion of sorts you know we're not getting a chance to have our say we feel very
00:35:47.620
disempowered and that is a crazy crazy place to be um it's hard to believe yeah it's hard to believe
00:35:57.220
that dundrum house is going through this change um you know and as i said it's nationwide there's many
00:36:06.280
communities being affected by this and we we need to be heard we all have a voice here and we should
00:36:13.140
be heard it's very very important but why why would it be sold out is it just about money is there
00:36:19.880
another force at work why would the government be doing this this is such a picturesque and historical
00:36:25.280
area the rock of cash flow there's there's there's history and culture and language and community
00:36:32.240
and continuity and suddenly the whole population of dundrum is being tripled by people we don't even
00:36:40.120
know who they are i don't understand it why is this happening well look that's i don't know if that's a
00:36:45.580
question for me i don't know if that's even something that we can answer right now um ultimately there
00:36:52.160
are decisions being made and by whom well they're made up in government um are they even being made in
00:37:00.200
ireland again i don't know that that's a question for me right now because it's so huge
00:37:07.580
your family's i'll move away from the political questions i understand that that's not your area
00:37:14.060
of expertise your expertise is this place you grew up here you worked here this was your home and
00:37:18.860
and your your personal home and your communal home what does the rest of your family think about this
00:37:24.060
what is the rest of community what do people in dundrum think about this is it split or is it
00:37:29.720
overwhelming are people afraid to speak out lest they be called racist or something well definitely
00:37:34.840
at the beginning there was a huge element when we started this protest um the word racist was being
00:37:41.140
used or far right or whatever even that mean i know well look ultimately they're just words that are
00:37:49.080
probably put out there to suppress us keep us down keep us quiet um which is you know it's very
00:37:57.480
important that we uh have a freedom of speech that we get to say how we feel i think there is nothing
00:38:05.100
at all wrong with the fact that we stand here for our community we have we have genuine concerns
00:38:12.120
genuine genuine concerns you mentioned about population and the you know we've a relatively small
00:38:18.500
population here and it will be doubled uh quite possibly in time um i don't know that we're ready
00:38:26.640
for that um i don't know that we have the services in place for that we're already under immense pressure
00:38:33.980
let me ask you one last question you grew up here so did your whole family
00:38:38.900
is there any sense that it's possible to take this back to take this hotel back it's got so much
00:38:47.180
potential i've got to say just as a prospective tourist like this is such a gem instead of transforming it
00:38:55.000
into a refugee camp i i've got to think that there's some tycoon or maybe just a group of people who buy it
00:39:02.820
back is that a possibility or am i dreaming well i'm dreaming that same dream um i would so love as i'm
00:39:11.640
sure many others would to see dundrum house hotel being run as it is meant to be um to provide as i
00:39:23.220
already said for the community in the way it's like it was a place for people to come together
00:39:28.680
uh whether it was a wedding or whether it was a funeral it was a place where people would come
00:39:33.880
together there has been amazing times spent in there you know people have so many stories so many
00:39:43.380
stories it's endless and for it would be a dream come true for it to serve in that way again in the
00:39:52.040
future it would be a dream it would be a dream well that's our show for today what do you think of that
00:40:00.080
until next time on behalf of all of us here at rebel news to you at home good night and keep fighting