You can see the changing face of Ireland on Main Street in Letterkenny, the largest town in County Donegal, where one in every 100 people is an asylum seeker.

People from Nigeria, Sudan, the Middle East and South Asia walk past the shops. It is common to hear Ukrainian spoken on what is said to be the longest street in Ireland.

Just five years ago, there were just two accommodation centres in County Donegal, which, like the rest of Ireland, is in the grips of a chronic housing and rental crisis.

Today, in central Letterkenny alone there are eight accommodation centres for migrants, including hotels, ex-student accommodation and an old casino dotted around Main Street.

Some now call it “Letterkenya”, as the town, and Ireland as a whole, struggles to come to terms with its transformation from being a place of emigration to immigration.

Those on the front line of a broken asylum system prefer to say that Donegal means “fort” or  “safe place of the foreigners” – an ancient reference to Viking settlers.

“We’ve probably got 2,000 to 3,000 people living in just the town of Letterkenny, who weren’t here three years ago,” said Paul Kerman, of the Donegal Intercultural Platform.

“That’s brought a lot of changes and different ethnicities Letterkenny wasn’t used to.”

Exact figures are hard to come by but the NGO estimates the 20,000 population has grown by about 7,000 people since 2022.

Not all of those are newcomers, with returning emigrants and other nationalities also included in the 2022 census figures thought to be skewed by the pandemic.

Roughly 8,000 Ukrainians came to Donegal after Russia’s illegal invasion, although some have now left or moved to private accommodation, Mr Kerman said. They have been joined by about 2,000 people from elsewhere seeking asylum.

The impact on housing, healthcare and schooling has exacerbated tensions in the 17th century market town, which is a short drive from Londonderry in Northern Ireland.