The most recent Irish General election, in February 2020, was dominated by a single issue: Housing.
For the better part of a decade, the Republic of Ireland has experienced a housing crisis which has progressively gotten worse. Prices have consistently risen, demand has grown, and supply has been unable to keep pace. In Dublin, the average price of a home is now more than half a million euros, while the average salary in Ireland is just about forty thousand euros. Owning a home in the capital city is now functionally out of reach for a huge swathe of that city’s inhabitants and owning a home anywhere else in the country is not a significantly easier prospect.
It is now abundantly clear that the Irish Government, despite their protestations to the contrary, did not have any real intention of addressing this problem.
We can make that assertion confidently because in recent weeks they have, from almost nowhere, unfurled a range of measures to dramatically increase the supply of housing in Ireland. But the catalyst for this was not a desire to reduce the pressure on the Irish housing market. Instead, it is to provide homes for Ukrainian refugees.
We want to state something here unequivocally: Whatever one’s anger might be at the Irish Government, Ukrainian refugees themselves are blameless. They are not responsible for Irish policy, or the fecklessness of our politicians. They have fled here in good faith, from a conflict that is ravaging their homeland. Anger directed at them is misplaced.
Anger at the Irish Government, however, is legitimate, and justified.
This weekend, for example, the Irish Government granted emergency powers to local authorities to enable them to enter the private housing market and purchase homes for Ukrainian refugees. Let us be clear what that means: At a time when Irish people are finding purchasing a home almost impossible, their own Government is now competing against them, to acquire homes which will then be given at no cost to Ukrainian refugees. The state will take money from Irish taxpayers, and then deploy that money to lock those very taxpayers out of the housing market.
At no stage, during the previous decade, was any kind of emergency measure of this nature considered. Fine Gael has been in power for over a decade – this kind of thinking could have been enacted at any time to alleviate our housing problems. It was not.
It is a statement of fact, then, that the Irish Government is taking measures to aid Ukrainian refugees that it has never so much as considered for its own citizens, in the hour of their need.
Now, there are even some deeply ill-advised whispers from legal experts about limiting the property rights of people, under the constitution, to acquire more homes for our Ukrainian guests. This is an idea so abhorrently wrong that we trust cooler heads will prevail.
Irish people have a right to expect that their government will put the interests of Irish people first. That was, after all, the foundational reason for our war of independence. For centuries, this country was administered from London in a way primarily and naturally designed to benefit the interests of another Kingdom. The promise of our independent nationhood was that our country would be governed in our own interests.
Can we really say, with any confidence, that the present Irish government is governing in such a way?
There is, of course, a common duty that accrues to us all as human beings to aid those in need. We do not argue here for turning away those in need. But what is happening here is much more than offering temporary refuge or shelter from the horrors of war: Instead, the Irish Government is actively prioritising the needs of Ukrainians over the needs of Irish people.
This is, unfortunately, symptomatic of a political and media establishment that has fundamentally embraced a vision of itself in which there is almost no room for the interests of its own people. Too many of our leaders appear to see themselves as citizens of the world first, and Ireland second. Too many of them appear to look for approval to their peers on the world stage, and not enough to their own constituents. Increasingly, what was once the very reason for our independence – putting Irish interests first – is denounced as a kind of bigoted, narrow nationalism at best, and “far right” at worst.
Our collective view is this: when it comes to allocating homes to people, the Irish Government should prioritise the people of Ireland. Not out of any disrespect for others, but because this is what the Irish government is for. It is why we have one to begin with.
When it comes to deciding how many refugees we should accommodate, the Irish Government should base that decision on the needs and capacity to help of Irish people, not on the needs of the refugees.
That, again, is what the Irish Government is for. The Irish Government has neither the duty, nor the right, to damage the interests of its own people to advance the cause of another.
Irish people have the right to expect that their Government will work to advance their interests, and alleviate their problems, and enhance the conditions in our country. These past weeks have made two things clear: First, that the Irish Government has transparently not done all that it could to alleviate our problems here in Ireland. Second, that it is transparently offering greater aid to the disadvantaged of a foreign nation than it offers to the disadvantaged of its own. That is a dereliction of duty.
Perhaps the Government feels a tinge of guilt that it is not providing the Ukrainians with the arms and defence equipment that they have asked for, and is over-compensating in return. Perhaps there is another explanation. In any case, it is evident to all but those who do not wish to see that Ireland’s effective policy of accomodating an unlimited number of refugees is a mistake.
Some people who feel this way will, of course, be frightened to speak up. There exists in Ireland an armada of well-funded groups and interests ready to denounce the slightest word of dissent on this issue, or many others, as racist or bigoted. Those groups are wrong: There is no resentment here of Ukrainians, or those of any other nation. There is only the simple fact that we have a Government, and establishment, that has forgotten why it exists in the first place.