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The City of Sanctuary was once again on the agenda at Monday night's, 6 July, meeting of Newry, Mourne and Down District Council. A motion by Mournes Councillor Henry Reilly asking for a suspension of council moving towards a 'City and District of Sanctuary' ultimately failed but not before a heated debate.
Discussions included being "Inundated with foreign nationals", "wasters that roam about Newry all hours of the day and night" adding "They're over here to bleed the system and wreck and rob", "committing ourselves to being a welcoming, inclusive and compassionate community for people who have fled war, persecution and violence" and declaring the motion was "the most dangerous and provocative motion to come before the council in many, many years".
The DUP, Official Unionists and Independent Councillor Jarlath Tinnelly voted for the motion to suspend while Sinn Fein, SDLP and Alliance voted against. A total of 6 councillors voted for the motion while 28 voted against.
Introducing his motion Cllr Reilly said "From the 13th of June 2026 The Republic of Ireland overhauled its immigration laws to align with the EU immigration pact that handed over responsibility for immigration to Brussels. Some people in the Republic see what's happening as an attack on Irish sovereignty, but it will also mean implementing harsh, fast-track border detentions and deportations. Our DUP group is very concerned that many illegals now resident in the Republic of Ireland will be displaced to Northern Ireland and especially to Newry, Mourne and Down District Council.
He continued: "As we recently voted through plans to designate the council district as a sanctuary region for refugees and asylum seekers. Our group is concerned that as the Irish government establishes accelerated processing and return hubs to comply with EU legislation, the Newry, Mourne and Down district could be inundated with foreign nationals who would become eligible for deportation from the republic, which is something we simply could not cope with, as our public service is already at breaking point and unable to cope with present demands."
Cllr Reilly explained that his group wants the UK authorities to closely liaise with the Irish authorities to prepare and initiate rigorous checks with stop and search and any person not in possession of a standard visitor visa or UK electronic travel authorisation arrested and detained until deportations can be arranged.
"We simply cannot allow the Newry, Mourne and Down District to develop as an escape hatch for illegals who are no longer eligible to remain in the Republic of Ireland. We do not lack compassion for people genuinely fleeing oppression and danger, but we believe that we must put our own people first in order to preserve our way of life and maintain our district as a safe and prosperous place for future generations. We, whose families have been here for centuries, have had our sectarian and political divisions, but we are a place where Protestant, Catholic, and dissenter can now live together peacefully in what is an incredibly high trust society, and we should do our best to keep it that way." added Cllr Reilly.
He continued: "We are at present a non-awarded member of the city and district of sanctuary, and if we look at what we have to do to become a full member, it is practically a highly political exercise that would bind us to do things that we feel are not in the interest of our present community. It would need a public consultation, and we would incur expense that would be imposed on the ratepayer at a time when families are already struggling. We respectfully propose that Newry, Mourne and Down District Council suspends our application to become a full member of the city and region of sanctuary."
Speaking of the EU pact Rowallane Councillor Callum Bowsie said: "When this was voted on in the Republic last month, Sinn Fein voted against these tougher border controls. Their leaders said the Irish Government's decision to opt Ireland into the EU migration pact handing over powers on migration to the EU was wrong and undermines Irish sovereignty. Yet Sinn Féin up here would rejoin the EU tomorrow if they could, and hand over control of these borders to Brussels."
Cllr Bowsie believes the EU's new asylum rules will be stricter and streamline the asylum process but cited uncertainty on what impact this will have on "encouraging asylum seekers to illegally cross the Irish border, with up to 90% of asylum seekers in the Republic of Ireland being secondary movers from another EU country". Cllr Bowsie added: "While this is ultimately a problem for the UK government to deal with, the last thing we, as a border council, need to be doing to incentivise the use of this loophole further is having district of sanctuary written across the border."
Commenting on the City of Sanctuary UK network he added: "I'm not against refugees, I've helped many, I'm against gimmicks, and having looked into it with an open mind, I can honestly say Council of Sanctuary really is the biggest load of nonsense. It is page after page of meaningless waffle about solidarity and compassion, devoid of any specific policy points. It does nothing to improve our immigration system for anyone. It's gesture politics by the left at its finest. Look at us, we have a City of sanctuary logo."
Cllr Bowsie added: "But here's what we're now expected to do to achieve accreditation criterion for learning and awareness. Council should provide evidence of refugee asylum migration awareness raising that is included into everyday business of the local authority, for example, staff induction training, officer and councillor briefings, by attendance at local and regional forums and networks. This council won't even send the councillor behind me to the NAC, but we're now going to be expected to attend sanctuary forums. Criterion 11 - councils to engage and influence national policy. So we're now going to be expected to waste time lobbying on a home office issue instead of improving basic council services.
"And finally, we need details as to how this council of sanctuary scheme is funded. If it's true that it's funded through the asylum dispersal grant the council receives every year, we saw last month's SP&R meeting that that was significantly over budget. That needs clarified, but to simply say on the council website that membership involves an annual 250 pound fee with no additional cost to the council, I think is for the birds. We need to stop the jesture politics and start delivering for our local communities."
Slieve Gullion Councillor Declan Murphy spoke of Sinn Féin's opposition to the motion and referenced Cllr Bowsie's comment. "Despite stating clearly that you are uncertain about the effect of Ireland joining the EU migration pact, you've deliberately and knowingly sought to use this to revisit an issue which was hijacked by the far right in 2025 to spread hatred and fear in this district. This has to be the most dangerous and provocative motion to come before the council in many, many years. It's dangerous in the dog whistling sense, for as we've seen last year in the city of Newry, and this year in many loyalist areas in Belfast, the far right is in standby to use all opportunities to racially attack international workers and decent people who are willing to protect them.
He continued: "This motion has already sent a signal to the far right, a group that does not distinguish between illegal immigrants and the international workers who complement the trove of highly skilled and dedicated people that are keeping our hospitals open and our economy from completely collapsing. The people who were targeted a few weeks ago in Belfast were NHS workers. We visited some of those people, international workers in Daisy Hill, in fact, Glyn [Cllr Hanna] was along with me, and they expressed fear. These are people who are coming from abroad, keeping our hospitals open, saving lives, yet the far right have created enough fear, enough hatred, enough division for these people to reconsider their position. Without them, our hospitals are closing, Craigavon, Newry and others. So that's the consequences of your actions."
Cllr Murphy continued: "The fear fermented by the far right is constant, and it is spawned by the super wealthy to distract from the inadequacies of failing capitalist governments and systems, and to generate fear, hate, and division throughout the world. The fact that a bomb was placed outside our office last year, and we all received death threats, really brings it home that the criminal far right is intent on creating fear in this district, and in particular the city of Newry, the city where this council and the councillors who are being targeted are investing hundreds of millions to regenerate it and the surrounding areas, create jobs, build homes, enhance the capacity of Daisy Hill Hospital, and give young people a reason to stay in the area that they're from. Compare that with the far right, and what they have to offer. Faux concern about housing, faux concern about our health system. I, nor any of my colleagues, have ever received a single letter of concern from any of these people on any social issue. Immigration policy needs to be comprehensive, unlike this motion, compassionate and enforceable. We must now not allow the far rights and their fellow travellers to use it as a Trojan horse to bring mayhem onto our streets."
Rowallane Councillor Tierna Howie said the District of Sanctuary initiative is about committing ourselves to being a welcoming, inclusive and compassionate community for people who have fled war, persecution and violence. She condemned the violence witnessed in recent weeks and spoke about the pressures being faced by people.
"We have a health system that is under pressure, with people dying on our waiting lists. There's 100,000 children in Northern Ireland live in poverty. Families are unable to access affordable housing, and we have one of the highest rates of violence against women in Western Europe, and our political institutions have suffered repeated periods of instability and collapse. These are things people should be angry with, and they should be upset with. They are genuine problems, and they deserve genuine solutions, but none of them were created by asylum seekers or immigration. Yet this motion asks us to accept this false premise that migration is somehow to blame for the challenges facing our communities. It is a lie, and it is a convenient scapegoat for the DUP from difficult decisions and their policy failures that have left so many feeling let down."
She added: "Successive former DUP ministers have failed to get to grips with the barriers to build more homes leading to a housing crisis that working families find themselves in. Workers in Northern Ireland are struggling under low wages and exploitative workplace practices that have fallen behind the rest of the UK, yet the DUP are blocking the Good Jobs Bill. 100,000 children I said earlier, 100,000 children live in poverty, and it's a shocking and saddening statistic. Yet the DUP anti-poverty strategy was not worth the paper it was written on. And shockingly, according to a recent lucid poll, a majority of people in Northern Ireland say the restored assembly has had either no impact or negative impact on their lives, and this is due to parties like DUP, who wield vetoes to stall and prevent progress around the executive table and in the Assembly. None of these issues that I have cited are to do with immigration or asylum seekers in Northern Ireland."
Slieve Gullion Councillor Pete Byrne said the SDLP would be voting against the motion and that he was disappointed at the wording of the motion.
"The DUP aren't interested in facts or correct information. It's all about fanning the flames with not only misleading information, but outright lies. How many times do we have to say again and again that the council of sanctuary, the city sanctuary network, does not control, and has no bearing on immigration on one single more person coming in here, but yet this is worded to open up with immigration to finish with the words asylum seekers and refugee, and then thrown into the middle."
Speaking about Cllr Bowsies comment on the initiative being a gimmick. he added: "Callum, when you say that it's a gimmick and there's no need for it, and you can sit there smiling while you say it, it's very, very easy for you to say it from the community that you come from. Try saying it's to the people that were in Belfast and burnt out of their houses. Try saying to the people in Lisburn who had to go into a community centre and then move out because they feared for their lives. It's, not a gimmick to them. And these things are real on the streets. These things are real for people on the streets."
Cllr Byrne spoke of a visit by some councillors to Daisy Hill Hospital staff in Newry who spoke about their current fears. "You can't turn around as elected reps who serve everybody in this community, no matter what background they come from, and say that there is no legitimacy to your fear. They feel fear, we can't call them out and say you don't. We have to step up and make sure that this district is welcoming for all who make this place their home".
He continued "This is simply about compassion, but we're using words like a burdon and a pressure, and the health service can't take any more, and opening the floodgates, and all that is designed to do is to provoke emotion, and we should not, in this chamber, we should not be making decisions based on emotion. We should be making decisions based on facts, on evidence, on the information that comes back to us. And this is going through, and we'll come back through the committee stage, and we will have a discussion on it, but we're not going to have an open and genuine and honest discussion if you're going to use it and conflate immigration with City of Sanctuary. It doesn't, as I say, bring another single person in here, because we don't control UK immigration policy. It's people that, who are legally settled here, and what do we want to do? Do we want to say we don't want you as part of the community, the people that are settled here, the people that are working and build their lives here and propping up our hospitality in our hospitals. Or are we saying we want to integrate you, you're part of our community, and we support you living and raising your family here and contributing to this society."
Cllr Byrne concluded: "There are genuine questions that people have around immigration, there are genuine questions around housing, around healthcare, around government failure, around funding from the UK government. They are genuine questions, but we've seen this script time and time again, we don't have to go back far to see people pointing the finger and saying it's their fault while they cover up the lack of delivery in government, whether here regionally or in the UK. It is not the fault of the vulnerable people who have been settled here, and we want to welcome them into our community and make sure that they live healthy and happy lives in our community. So you can blur the lines, you can talk about immigration, you can talk about floodgates, but it's simply not true."
Rowallane Councillor Jonathan Jackson added: "People do have genuine concerns, and those concerns are centred around illegal and uncontrolled immigration, and the impact that is having in some of our communities. And whether we like it or not, there is pressure on our health service, there is pressure on our infrastructure, there is pressure on our schools, and all of that can feed in to a prioritisation of funding from mainstream, and all we're saying tonight is those genuine concerns are not being listened to. And my question tonight would be, when is the Alliance Party and SDLP and Sinn Fein going to actually listen to the people who have these genuine concerns?"
Slieve Gullion Councillor David Taylor said he would be supporting the motion and spoke of genuine concerns about immigration but that we should be careful of the language we use in debates.
"it is essential that we decouple legal and illegal immigration in our politics, and certainly in our public debate also, mixing the two does a disservice to those who have come here lawfully and contributed enormously to our society, and we see that, as has already been referenced, to the importance to the function of our local services and the health system being a prime example of that, in particular, but illegal immigration is nonetheless a serious issue, and it's one that needs to be tackled head on, and more must be done by our government in that regard to address the concerns, but I know that tonight's motion does focus obviously on our the recent debates that there have been regarding the city of sanctuary that was agreed by the majority of councillors on Newry, Mourne and Down, and the fact remains that there are genuine concerns within the community as to what this actually entails, and I don't think we've ever taken enough time to reflect on those concerns. There has been a couple of debates at council level, but we have actually went in to the detail of this about what it actually results in for our council and for our district. I don't think we actually have."
Crotlieve Councillor Jarlath Tinnelly spoke about breaking ranks and voiced his support for the motion.
"Over the past number of months I think there has been legitimate, genuine concerns raised by plenty of the citizens within our district, and it's very, very easy to gaslight them and call them right wing and call them loyalists and call them everything under the sun, and we may not agree with a lot of what's said, particularly in the online forum, but a lot of people have genuine concerns."
Cllr Tinnelly then spoke on Newry city: "I personally have noticed drastic change in some parts of our own city in Newry. It's unrecognisable, Chairman, and particularly at certain times of the day, in the evening, I see groups, people going about who are clearly new to the city, and I really need to make the distinction between the people that come here to support and enhance our essential services. I unequivocally and wholeheartedly support them coming here. That's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about these wasters that roam about Newry all hours of the day and night, and if there was work in bed they'd lie on the floor. They're over here to bleed the system and wreck and rob, and for that reason, I may not be comfortable sometimes with the language used by the DUP in these motions, but I am convinced that until we know more about what these city of sanctuaries are about, that the easiest option is to pause everything. Thank you.
Cllr Henry Reilly summing us added: "I think Councillor Murphy should withdraw that accusation because it is not far right to want to protect your own communities and it's not about being anti immigrant it's about being pro-controlled immigration. The people who work in our health service are people who come here at our invitation and are doing a brilliant job, and I would stand with those people 100% if there was any threat against them. We are talking about people who have come here unvetted, and as Councillor Tinley put, there are so many people who come here and are not trying to seek employment, they're just going on welfare, and that's not a good thing."
Cllr Reilly added: "It's not far right to want to put your own communities first, and Councillor Murphy talked about people targeting in Belfast as a result of the unrest there, and the fact is, Chairman, a man who came through Italy, France, and Dublin, and then got a bus to Belfast, and then completed a 10 page tick box questionnaire, got the right to remain in the UK.
The Motion - Suspension of Membership the of City and District of Sanctuary from Cllr Henry Reilly
Given the uncertainty regarding the effect that the Republic of Ireland joining the EU migration and asylum pact will have on border areas in Northern Ireland, that this Council suspends any move towards membership of the City and District of Sanctuary for asylum seekers and refugees scheme.
