The owner behind a former convent designated to house over 80 Ukrainian refugees in a county Longford town has pulled out of the project following an attempted arson attack on the premises last night.
The three-storey building, located in the centre of Lanesboro town, had been due to take in 85 Ukrainian nationals later this year.
Those efforts, however, were dealt a blow last night when the building was targeted in a suspected arson attack.
No damage to the property was reported and while gardaí are continuing to investigate the circumstances behind last night’s episode, it has now emerged the owner of the property has decided to withdraw from pressing ahead with those plans.
Speaking at a meeting of Longford County Council this afternoon, acting director with Longford County Council’s Humanitarian Response Team, Michael Nevin, said the property’s owner had decided on the move on personal safety grounds.
“It’s a poor day for Longford,” he said, revealing the owner and Westmeath-based businessman, had been planning to spend in excess of €1m as part of the project.
“Our sympathies should lie with the promoter here. He answered a national call to repurpose vacant buildings to house Ukrainian refugees. He answered that call, he bought the building, he was prepared to put in over €1m to repurpose the building and has already spent over €100,000.
“Now he can’t proceed with the building for risk for his own safety, his family’s safety, his company’s safety and his employee’s safety and I think it’s a shame it has come to this.”
Longford County Council Cathaoirleach Cllr Colm Murray was just as vocal in his condemnation of last night’s incident.
In doing so, Cllr Murray took aim at the “substandard” levels of communication which had been relayed to Longford County Council by the Department of Integration, something he said had played a role in the circulation of damaging commentary across various social media platforms.
“There are some going around and considering this a victory, a victory for the community and a victory for what they were espousing and that is not the case either,” he said.
“The communication from the Department of Integration has been below standard, substandard and non-existent in some cases”.
He said had those channels of communication been of a more candid and open standard, it would have gone a long way towards averting “the spin, nonsense and b*** that winds up going up on Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else”.
Longford County Council chief executive Paddy Mahon said while the rising influence of social media in incidents of this type were “disturbing”, the local authority had not been found wanting in relaying whatever communication it had at its disposal to local politicians over the now defunct project.
Mr Mahon had similarly strong words for the orchestrators behind last night’s suspected arson attack, branding the goings on as “absolutely disgraceful behaviour”.
He said: “Last night’s really, really scandalous attempt to portray Longford as something as it isn’t needs to be addressed because Longford is a very welcoming county.”
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