Allegations against asylum-seekers by a group of Rosslare residents were criticised yesterday by the Government agency set up to combat racism. In a statement to The Irish Times, residents opposed to the plan to convert a hotel in the village into a reception centre for asylum-seekers claimed 1,000 Nigerians were awaiting trial in Dublin on credit-card fraud charges.
Citing newspaper reports and research by residents at Rosslare Europort as evidence, the group said only 3 per cent of asylum-seekers entering Ireland through the port were genuine; the other 97 per cent were "illegal immigrants". The group said only 5 per cent of asylum-seekers coming through the port had a passport on arrival.
Immigration officers at the port were asked the following type of questions: "Which hotel do we stay in? Where do we collect our money? When can we have our taxi to our hotel? Where do we collect our clothes vouchers? We want to go to Dublin," the statement added.
The residents also claimed that two in three credit-card frauds were done by Nigerians. They also alleged that asylum-seekers at Rosslare tended to be "well-dressed gentlemen" and that "gold bracelets, neck chains and earrings are the order of the day".
The director of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, Mr Philip Watt, said a small number of groups were using "emotive, selective and inaccurate information" which had the potential to sustain an atmosphere of hostility towards asylum-seekers.
"Through a process of labelling and misinformation - even if it is not the intention of the authors - asylum-seekers can be demonised and dehumanised, thus creating the necessary conditions for racism, including racially motivated attacks," he said.
Mr Watt said the number of asylum-seekers in Ireland, 11,400, was relatively small, and in most areas the process of integration was occurring relatively smoothly. "The notion of a crime wave among asylum-seekers has been consistently denied by gardai, yet asylum-seekers continue to be labelled as such."
Many of those seeking asylum were coming from countries where persecution did take place, he added. "For instance, some of the Romanian asylum-seekers are Roma and gypsies".
Mr Remi Awogboro of the Nigerian Support Group said he could not vouch for individual asylum-seekers, but people should be considerate towards those who were honest.
A Department of Justice spokesman said about 30 per cent of asylum-seekers whose claims were processed were granted refugee status. Even allowing for abandoned claims, the figure was 20 to 25 per cent and he did not know where the residents' figure of 3 per cent for Rosslare could have come from.
In a letter to Mr Awogboro in March, Supt John Farrelly of the Garda press office said figures published in newspapers alleging Nigerian involvement in crime had not come from gardai, either officially or unofficially. "We do not when publishing crime figures link crimes to individual groups," he said.
