A group set up to welcome asylum seekers to Lismore, Co Waterford has expressed hope that people will welcome the new arrivals after over 60 international protection applicants were placed in the west Waterford town.
Some 69 asylum seekers arrived in Lismore on February 2nd and are being accommodated at the Lismore House Hotel in the centre of town. The group, comprising mainly families and single women, have already begun to integrate and get involved in community activities, say local activists.
Jane Jermyn of Lismore for All said the volunteer group had grown dramatically and now has close to 50 members. They met some of the asylum seekers last week to try to establish their needs and how the local community can assist them to settle in to their new home.
“We met two of the new residents, one woman from Zimbabwe and another woman from Swaziland – we had a really positive time meeting them, and we’ve got lots of stuff organised to help them because there are a lot of children in the group in the hotel.”
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Three weeks ago up to 300 people protested in Lismore, objecting to the town’s only hotel being used to accommodate asylum seekers, but Ms Jermyn said the objections have dissipated and the new arrivals have been “broadly welcomed”.
“There were no local protests at all when they arrived and there are lots of smiles – the vast majority of the new arrivals speak English pretty well and they are mainly families with 23 children under the age of 17, there are six men with their families, one man with his daughter and no single men.
“We drew up a list of what is available and some of the activities that will be starting up again soon like the Tidy Towns and we gave the list to the two women who came to our meeting so they can find out what is happening in the town and what people might be interested in joining.
“They can tell us what they would like and what the other residents in the hotel need rather than us being all do-goody and running around, saying ‘We’re doing this, this and this’ because they mightn’t want to do that and they might need to do other things or need help with other things.”
Ms Jermyn instanced how the exchange is already paying dividends with volunteers offering to set up a carpool after they learned that one family staying in the hotel needed to get to University Hospital Waterford in Ardkeen for an appointment for one of their children.
She also said the new arrivals are spending their allowances in local shops including Centra and a local second-hand clothes shop so there is already some economic spin-off for the town from the asylum seekers’ arrival.
She said the local Heritage Centre had offered the new arrivals free access to virtual tours of Lismore Castle, while it also hopes to host groups on a heritage walk around the historic town.
“That will introduce them to a lot of Lismore while we’ve also told them about the library and the services that are available there while the sports clubs have also given us their numbers if people want to go along and try their hand at various sports – so far it’s all been very positive.”
