Online Events – New Horizon Athlone

Hearing the footsteps of Irish Famine refugees

An international commemoration of the journey of thousands of Irish people who emigrated during the Famine took place on Wednesday 2 December. It recalled the…

Angela 2020-11-30

Course offers innovative thinking in business

NUI Galway includes refugees and asylum-seekers in this programme. TechInnovate, a study centre at the NUI University in Galway, is running a six-week course starting…

Gerry Callaghan 2020-11-09

Take time to rhyme

Here’s an opportunity to meet people online and express yourself through poetry. Tell your story in any of the many forms that poetry can take.…

Gerry Callaghan 2020-10-08

Online Drop-in Clinic

Because of the virus shutdown I’ve been exploring how to run online meetings as an alternative to person-to-person contact. This would allow New Horizon to…

Gerry Callaghan 2020-03-17

We are a front line refugee support group mainly working on the Lissywollen Direct Provision site in Athlone. Our focus is on providing information and help to the 300 (on average) residents living there.

We also work on the Temple Direct Provision site in Horseleap, Moate.

Everyone in the DP sites in Athlone and Temple is what is described as a ‘Convention’ refugee. People who have arrived in Ireland under a United Nations resettlement program are known as ‘Programme’ refugees.

Convention refugees are people who have made their own way to Ireland and have applied for recognition of refugee status when they arrive.

Various official and unofficial routes and methods are used to travel to Ireland. These change continually, depending on weather conditions and enforcement levels at crossings.

On arrival people are normally housed for a few weeks in Baleskin, near Dublin airport. They are then dispersed to various direct provision centres around the country.

People can get protection if they meet the conditions set out in The United Nations Convention on Protection of Refugees.

See Definition of a Refugee