Irish police have been investigating a second fire in less than a fortnight at a building local residents reportedly believed would be used to accommodate asylum seekers.

The emergency services were called to the scene at Ringsend area of Dublin in the early hours of New Year’s Eve.

It took nearly 30 firefighters three hours to bring the incident under control. The building, which was previously the Shipwright pub, was vacant at the time.

Local residents had been informed that the premises would be used to accommodate homeless families but many reportedly refused to believe it would not be used to house asylum seekers.

The fire follows a blaze less than two weeks ago at the Ross Lake hotel in Rosscahill, near Oughterard in County Galway in the west of Ireland.

Protestors there had gathered to block access to the vacant hotel just hours before it was set alight.

Both fires follow the riots in Dublin on 23 November, when far-right activists called on supporters to take to the streets.

Earlier that the day a man stabbed three children and a carer, severely injuring one of the children and the woman, outside a school on Parnell Square in central Dublin. As rumours spread that the suspect was a foreign national – he was in fact a naturalised Irish citizen originally from Algeria – hundreds of people, some chanting anti-immigrant slogans, gathered near the scene and began to riot.

The suspect, aged 50, was charged in connection with the incident.

The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, has said that if the Ringsend fire “was the result of a deliberate act, all efforts will be made to bring the perpetrators to justice”.

Detectives are treating the blaze as suspected arson. No arrests have been made but there is a growing fear within government circles about the copycat nature of the fires.

The Garda Síochána commissioner, Drew Harris, has in the past said there was “no hidden hand” behind the fires.