Police Investigate After ‘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 newcomers.

Police are investigating the blaze as potential criminal damage, and while the cause and potential motie of the fire is so far unknown it has even been criticised by the Irish Prime Minister on the assumption it was deliberate arson by an anti-mass migration activist. Protests had taken place outside the hotel the day of the fire, with locals blockading the drive to prevent access.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, criticised those he suggested may have been behind the fire and blamed anti-immigration sentiment on ignorance. He said: “I’m concerned about the level of misinformation, quite frankly, that is out there and we have a duty, as do the media by the way, in ensuring that we’re all informed and that we can push back against misinformation myths when they arise.”

Varadkar said: “There is no justification for violence, arson or vandalism in our Republic. Ever.”

There was some pushback against these sentiments, however, with Fianna Fáil councillor Noel Thomas saying the locals who had protested against the hotel becoming a migrant centre were devestated by the loss of a valued local historic building to fire. The Irish Independent reported Thomas as saying: “You’ve got to understand the strong links that hotel has got with the community there and everybody there were completely disheartened and gutted when they heard it had burnt down… They’re disgusted with what happened to that hotel and nobody, nobody condones what happened there.”

Nevertheless, 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.