‘This is cleansing’: Dublin sends in police and buses to dismantle tent city

Shocked people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria herded on to coaches as 200 tents removed and streets cleaned

The convoy arrived just after sunrise, a stream of police vehicles, council trucks, mounted cranes and coaches, ready to dismantle a tent city of migrants and refugees in the heart of Dublin that had become too big, too visible, too political.

They fenced off streets and herded shocked, sleepy men from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and other countries on to buses and began to extirpate about 200 tents, gradually extinguishing all traces of the camp, but no amount of sweeping and hosing could remove the whiff of elections and diplomacy gone wrong.