On Saturday, December 16th, 2023, the former Ross Lake House Hotel in Rosscahill near Oughterard, Co Galway, was set on fire in a suspected arson attack. The previous week, protesters had gathered outside the building after it was announced it would be used as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers.
Frustrated by the spreading misinformation about migrants, local Rosscahill resident Prof Afshin Samali, a leading cancer specialist from the University of Galway who came here as a refugee in the 1980s, decided to speak out.
He posted a thread of messages on X about why Irish people should be “open-minded and compassionate” towards refugees. In the days that followed, after nearly four decades living in Ireland, he experienced racism for the first time in this country.
After posting the online thread, he received a “barrage of hate speech and racist comments”.
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A year and a half on, Prof Samali still feels saddened when he recalls this anti-migrant incident. However, those attacking him “were a very small minority”, he clarifies. Most messages he received in the wake of his post were words of “kindness and support”.
Prof Samali arrived in Ireland in December 1985 aged 15 with his parents and siblings as part of a small group of Bahá’í refugees who were resettled in Ireland. His family had fled Iran where members of the Baháʼí faith experienced persecution, exclusion and sometimes imprisonment or execution.
Before the fire in December 2023, Prof Samali and his wife and colleague, Prof Adrienne Gorman, were preparing to launch an NGO dedicated to removing barriers to education for refugees and asylum seekers in Ireland.
“We did register the foundation in 2024 but some serious threats were made against myself and my family, so I felt we needed to regroup.”
Almost exactly 18 months on, on June 17th, Prof Samali and Prof Gorman gathered at the Royal Irish Academy with friends, colleagues and supporters, including Minister of State for Migration Colm Brophy, to launch the Samali Foundation.
The non-profit is dedicated to advancing access to third-level education for minorities who face systematic and structural barriers to participation, he told attendees.
“The foundation’s primary focus is to research, identify and remove barriers to education that hinder refugees and asylum seekers from accessing education,” says Prof Samali. This will include mentorship programmes and the development of a postgraduate access programme.
“I could see there was a gap – we’d started seeing larger numbers of refugees coming here who had studied in their own home countries but when they came here with those qualifications, they were being forced into low-paid jobs and [to] start from scratch,” Prof Samali told The Irish Times.
“This pushes these people into a vicious cycle of poverty. I felt I could do something unique by bringing my own personal experience as a refugee, and professional experience in academia, together.
“I felt a moral obligation and duty to help with the integration of refugees. The better the integration, the better it is for the country. And education is key in that process.”
The foundation recently secured financial backing from the highly sought-after UN High Commissioner for Refugees-led innovation fund to develop a pilot postgraduate access programme for migrant groups. It was one of just 14 groups selected out of 3,500 international applications for the support.
The pilot will formally begin later this year, with a goal of enrolling its first students in September 2026. The foundation is working directly with the University of Galway and is also collaborating with the University of Limerick and Maynooth University.
In recent years, Prof Samali and his family have hosted a number of Afghan refugees in their home, some of them students. He was also part of a community sponsorship group in Rosscahill that formed in the wake of the Ross Lake House Hotel fire.
“The fire at Rosscahill actually pulled our community together to help other newcomers. After I spoke out, a lot of our neighbours rallied around us and were very supportive. That was the positive outcome from a sad incident – before we just lived in Rosscahill, but now we really feel we’re an integral part of the community.”
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Later this year, Prof Samali will mark 40 years living in Ireland. However, he still feels a strong link to Iran and is concerned the Israel-Iran conflict will prompt a new wave of refugees into Europe. “It upsets me to see what is happening there, I see my family and friends living in fear of what’s going to happen next,” he says.
“And it’s not only Iranians. Almost 10 per cent of the population is made up of displaced Afghans. I also have friends and colleagues in Israel who fear being attacked by neighbouring countries. And I’m also concerned about the plight of the Palestinians.
“At the end of the day, we should want the same safety for newcomers coming here from war and conflict as we want for our own families. We need to help them build their lives here again.”
