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Debunked: Images of men at Dublin Airport show EU seasonal workers, not an ‘invasion’

The false claim was spread by TheLiberal.ie

IMAGES SHOWING MEN being picked up on busses outside Dublin Airport is not evidence of an invasion, as some widely-viewed social media posts suggest.

Instead, the photos show seasonal workers coming from Slovakia to work on a turkey farm ahead of Christmas.

“‘We are being invaded’” began a November 26 post on X.com by TheLiberal.ie that included the hashtag #IrelandIsFull.

“200 male-only migrants being loaded onto four private coaches,” it continued.

The Liberal is a fringe site that regularly posts lies about immigration, including a previous claim debunked by The Journal about buses dropping off migrants in Santry, Dublin. The buses were actually dropping off children for a school athletics competition.

Their post was seen more than 104,800 times, according to stats on X.com.

A post by a different user, published on 25 November, which also included the same pictures and the #IrelandIsFull hashtag, described the men being loaded onto “McEntee busses”, referring to the Minister of Justice, Helen McEntee, who is responsible for implementing immigration controls.

That post had accumulated more than 408,200 views.

However, there is no evidence in the pictures, which mostly just show men at a bus stop, to say that the people shown are immigrants, an invasion, or that the buses were arranged by the government.

“For clarity, this was a group of EU nationals (from Slovakia) arriving into Ireland to work as seasonal workers on a turkey farm in the run up to Christmas,” read a reply by Dublin Airport to the tweet that mentioned ‘McEntee busses’.

“Busses were provided by their employer,” Dublin Airport continued.

Whenever large groups are going through the airport, the airport’s security and police teams are informed.

The airport is also informed about refugee activity, though that was not the case for the large group in the photos.

The Slovakian workers in the photo arrived on a charter flight organised by their employer.

EU nationals, such as those from Slovakia, have the right to travel and work in Ireland — much as Irish people have the same right to work anywhere in the EU.

Turkey and other poultry farms regularly require extra workers around Christmas time, including packing and delivering the carcasses.

“If it weren’t for foreign workers, there wouldn’t be a chicken produced in this country,” one producer told the Farmers Journal this year.

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