‘I will not be intimidated by our Tricolour’: The women pushing back against the far right

One of Dublin city centre’s busiest streets has been transformed with a “welcome all” mural by Singaporean-Irish artist Holly Pereira.

The new mural – North Strand Welcomes All – was unveiled last week just as Dublin City Council was conducting a review into the issue of Tricolours being erected by anti-immigration campaigners on lamp-posts across the capital.

Pereira, who has been painting murals for 10 years, is one of many female Irish artists working to welcome immigrants to the city, and says it is “nice to be part of the conversation”.

“Ninety-five per cent of people were super positive about it,” Pereira said, “but there was a small amount of people who – at the time it was quite stressful – were shouting at me, ‘No, we don’t welcome all’. It was just far-right people who had a problem with it.

“It was grown men who were shouting at me in the street going, ‘No, we don’t like that’, or one man said, ‘I’m going to come and get some of the lads to paint over that tomorrow’.

“But the majority of people … some of whom would not be as leftie as me … we found common ground on it. They said, ‘I like the colour of it’ and ‘Even if we don’t agree on every issue [such as immigration], we can agree on improving our neighbourhood and community’ – there’s a baseline of mutual respect that’s important.”

In Dublin 12, artist Sarah Bracken Soper felt so strongly about racist stickers blaming immigrants for violence against women, which she noticed on lamp-posts around her area, that she created her own pro-immigration “Ireland For All” stickers to paste over them.

“I noticed the stickers on the walk to my daughter’s creche, and I just didn’t want that in my neighbourhood. It was blaming immigrants for violence, and it mentioned female victims in the sticker – linking violent crime to anyone who wasn’t white Irish. To see victims further victimised in a sticker and used for racist messaging. I made that sticker to cover it up with that,” she said.

She has noticed the emergence of Tricolours on lamp-posts and on people’s houses in recent weeks.

“You do get this feeling of dread, but that’s changed for me now. I’m not going to be intimidated by our Tricolour; it’s not ever going to be a symbol of divide. I think we need to reclaim the flag and celebrate it for what it is: peace and unity,” she said.

Ms Bracken Soper’s Palestinian friend, a student at University College Dublin, “regularly” gets taunted on the street and the artist has just completed a mosaic portrait of her, which she intends to submit to the Royal Hibernian Academy for exhibition next year.

“She is a genocide survivor who arrived in Ireland in 2024 and regularly people shout at her on the street. They say ‘Go home’ to her, and that’s all she wants to do. She wants to go home but her home has been reduced to rubble,” Ms Bracken Soper said. “She was running a small design business while studying in Gaza when the genocide began.”

For Ms Bracken Soper, who received “horrible abuse” online when she posted an Instagram reel of her replacing the racist sticker with her own, art is the platform which she can use to fight back against anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“A lot of [the abuse] was far-right white males threatening me, saying, ‘I’ll change my opinion when I get raped’ or that they ‘hope I get raped’,” she said.

However, she said, “at the bottom of the sticker is ‘Ní neart go cur le chéile’”, meaning there is no strength without unity.

“The people coming out with these negative messages are really loud and that means that the opposition needs to be really loud,” Ms Bracken Soper said.

She said far-right racist messaging was “something that I can see becoming more visible, so it’s important that the resistance to it is visible too”.

On Saturday, a group of volunteers known as Inchicore For All gathered to march at the Ireland Against Racism Carnival at the Garden of Remembrance, Dublin.

The group has been organising quarterly multicultural feasts and nature trips and funding for children’s summer camps. It has been buddying-up families new to the area with local families who can share advice and information on social clubs or preschools and schools.

Louise Fitzpatrick, one of the volunteers, said: “We started out as a bunch of mammies. We’re all volunteers, now also including men; we all have full-time jobs or full-time care responsibilities. Our co-chair had a baby a few weeks ago and she’s still busy organising lots of different things.

“We’ve been very lucky in Inchicore. It has always been a melting pot; there’s been very little agitation in the community and it’s probably because people are aware that the voice of welcome is much louder and bigger than the unwelcome voice.”

[ Use of Tricolour to mark territory for ‘indigenous Irish’ inappropriate, says Minister ]

She said the flag issue was of concern everywhere and that it was “creeping up”, but they were very focused that their space remained friendly.

“We have our own banner and logo and we brought it to the protest at the Garden of Remembrance, but we’re also very proud to fly the Tricolour in the right sentiment. It means peace and unity, and the people in our local IPAS [International Protection Accommodation Service] centre are very aware of that.”

They have developed a template for other community groups to use for setting up the family buddy system. The group also hosts clothes swaps, Halloween costume swaps, Christmas jumper swaps, and it facilitates attendance at market stalls where makers and bakers at the local IPAS centre can have their wares sold.

“Often friendships develop. We’ve had families go on holidays together. I’m godparent to one of my buddy families’ kids. We’ve been at weddings. And we make sure that everything we do benefits the whole of the community, the whole of Inchicore,” she said.

In the north inner city, volunteers were mobilised to form welcoming groups such as Cross-Cultural Conversations or East Wall Here For All following anti-immigrant protests at the opening of an asylum centre at the end of 2022.

Niamh McDonald, from Hope and Courage Collective (HCC), said: “We’ve got beautifully diverse expansive communities, and it’s really important that we show and express what our communities are and it’s important that we hold on to our flag and what the flag means and do it in our own way.

“This volunteer work is never seen. What is front and centre is the division, but the unseen work, day in, day out, where there has been no division and just a welcome, is what is most important. Our flag is one of solidarity, peace, unity, and hope. The work that people are doing on the ground is incredible.

“With the mix of all the people seeking asylum coming together, these events become a space of learning about culture, language and food.

“On a human level, all these people want is to have a safe space to live, to have an everyday life of having a roof over their head, finding love, joy, connection, seeing their children grow. There’s a humanity there.”

Since 2023, HCC has supported more than 100 communities in “responding to fear and division by building solidarity and hope”, she said.

Green Party Dublin city councillor Hazel Chu, who also felt moved to protest on Saturday, said it was very important to her that anyone protesting brought the Tricolour to the protest.

“One of the things I told everyone ahead of Saturday is bring a Tricolour because, you know what, that flag does not belong to just one group of people. It belongs to us all so, what do we do with it? How do we recapture it?

“I would love to start a campaign called Recapture the Flag, because it’s as much mine as it is yours; it belongs to everyone. The anti-immigration sentiment is what some groups are peddling out, that’s why we have to counter it.”

Regarding its review of flag use in its areas, Dublin City Council said a comprehensive risk assessment was required before anything could be removed from public lighting poles.

“These assessments are currently being carried out and will also inform our review,” a spokesman said.

The newly unveiled mural on the North Strand Road, made possible through the 2025 North Inner City Discretionary Fund, now “stands as a vibrant symbol of local pride, community engagement and the power of public art”, he said.

Lord Mayor Ray McAdam said: “When you scatter ‘Welcome to’ across walls and rooftops across a city, you don’t just mark boundaries you write invitations.

“Murals become the city’s greeting cards, saying not just come here, but you are seen, you belong, you matter.”