‘Migrant Hotel’ Burns Down Days Before Taking First Residents

A historic country house hotel due to be handed over to new migrant arrivals in Ireland burnt down just hours after it was subject to a protest by concerned locals.

Ross Lake House hotel, a 19th-century Georgian-style property near Oughterard in Galway, Ireland burnt down on Saturday night. The hotel had been operating until the end of 2022, and was earmarked to become a migrant accommodation facility in the coming days, due to house 70 immigrants. 

Protests had taken place outside the hotel the day of the fire, with locals blockading the drive to prevent access.

Locals have legitimate grievances and good reason for concern about 70 migrants coming to their small rural community, Thomas said. He told the paper: “What they’re afraid of is that there maybe some antisocial behaviour coming from a group of young men being isolated in an area like this… we have a situation here where we are bringing more and more people in here, we have no place for them to stay, we’re putting them into hotels, we’re putting them into B&Bs, we’re putting them into rooms in houses, that is not proper accommodation for people and it’s actually causing a lot of upset in a lot of communities.”

“We really have to start realising that the inn is full.”

Migrant hotels bursting into flames was once a relatively common occurrence in Europe during the peak times of the Europe Migrant Crisis of 2015-1, although reasons for the blazes varied. In some cases it was proven that dissatisfied locals started fires in empty hotels once they had been designated for migrant settlement, but in others it was discovered migrants themselves were burning the buildings out of disappointment at standard of living they were being provided with by European authorities.

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