The reality on the ground in regard to the impact the surge in immigration is having the housing crisis is leading to what is being described as a “bitter backlash” in Sligo after students were told their housing was to be given to those claiming asylum.
It was always a massive mistake for the government to refuse the perfectly reasonable step of putting a cap on the number of Ukrainian refugees Ireland could accommodate – and it is almost unbelievable that Leo Varadkar is still insisting that this is the case.
The housing squeeze has, of course, been further exacerbated by Minister Helen McEntee’s decision to grant an amnesty to undocumented migrants (because why not come to Ireland illegally when your status will be made legal eventually) – and by the entirely foolish actions of Minister Roderic O’Gorman in telling the world that accommodation lots of other services would be available to anyone who came here with an asylum story.
But, for the last twelve months or more, easy virtue-signalling has been on a collision course with hard reality.
We’ve put a billion-euro hole in our tourism industry as hoteliers cash in on state funding for asylum accommodation, while everyone else involved – the restaurants, tour operators and more – count their losses.
But the government, and the Opposition, with the latest poll showing 75% of people disagreeing with their immigration policy. can’t keep ignoring the chaos that is arising from its efforts to squeeze a very large amount of people seeking accommodation into a very small amount of available housing.
Thus we come to Sligo – and to the “bitter backlash” against taking accommodation from students and giving it to people who claim asylum, which, as the world and its mother now knows, might likely be someone from a safe country like Georgia and Nigeria who, in reality, are not fleeing war or persecution.
Many may have mysteriously lost their passports and other forms of identity. Either way, they need housing, and the students in Sligo look set to be shunted aside, because, it seems, the needs of Irish people – from local communities in Inch to old people in nursing homes – will always be subjugated to our “international obligations.”
The Sligo Independent reports that the local students union – hardly a bastion of ‘far-right’ thought – are up in arms about the decision by the owners of two large apartment complexes to boot the students aside for what may be a more lucrative deal to house migrants.
The Atlantic Technological University (ATU) Sligo Students’ Union has expressed concern and disappointment over recent decisions by the owners of two apartment complexes to discontinue student bookings for the 2023/24 academic year.
There are reports that the complexes will be used to house upwards on 800 international protection applicants.
The students union said that their members were distressed and left scrambling for accommodation – and described the move as “tone-deaf” and “wholly insensitive”.
“The decision, characterised by miscommunication and a lack of transparency, is out of touch and insensitive, compounding the challenges students already face in securing affordable and suitable accommodation,” they said
Statement regarding closure of Benbulben Court and Milligan Court student accommodation. #sligo #atusligo pic.twitter.com/rP47HTBxMl
— ATU Students’ Union, Sligo (@atussu_ie) June 13, 2023
Local TD Mark McSharry told the Irish Independent that he had raised the issue with senior ministers, “after it emerged over the weekend that students from the recently established Atlantic Technological University had been informed they could not be guaranteed accommodation for the coming term”.
In a letter to Mr O’Gorman, Mr MacSharry said it had been brought to his attention that students who were previously renting in purpose-built accommodation near the university were told the housing would no longer be available for the forthcoming academic term.
Mr MacSharry said it would be “virtually impossible” for students to get alternative accommodation in Sligo for the coming year if the plan to change the use of the housing went ahead.
“While I appreciate the demands to assist refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing persecution, the use of purpose-built student accommodation or accommodation adjacent to third-level institutions normally used for accommodation must not be permitted – in any circumstances,” he said.
Speaking to the Irish Independent, Mr MacSharry said switching the use of the accommodation away from students for asylum seekers would cause “absolute bedlam for Ireland’s newest university”.
“Absolute bedlam”. It’s a good summation of the fine mess the government’s immigration policy has got the country into.
Apparently, the current situation is that the Department of Integration – under Minister Roderic O’Gorman – has “an offer of housing from the former provider of student accommodation in Sligo” but Simon Harris, the Minister for Higher Education, wants the students, rather than the asylum seekers, to get the housing.
The lack of joined up thinking is simply astonishing. And these are the people meant to be in charge of running the country.
Mark MacSharry was pretty scathing about the whole debacle.
“It’s time for Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin to stop focusing on their future EU careers and focus on the issues facing the people living in this country,” he told the Independent.
The Independent described the opposition to what’s happening in Sligo as a “bitter backlash”, and its interesting to see that the majority opinion in the country now seems more aligned to the views of those early protesters in areas like East Wall who were the first to draw attention to the lunacy of Ireland’s migration policy.
The out-of-control immigration surge is now impacting on Irish people across the most fundamental aspects of life: schools, healthcare, housing, and the desire of communities to feel safe and consulted.
The hundreds of students in Sligo who worked to get their college places, and who now might be denied accommodation – and the parents who worked like dogs to help their kids take a step out into life on their own – understand that the bedlam caused by what is amounting to untrammelled inward migration is not just ridiculous, it is harmful and unsustainable.
The growing anger of ordinary Irish people right across the country at the sheer contempt in which they are being held by their own government needs an outlet. People need someone to vote for to stop this madness. At this point, they will find that neither in the government nor in Sinn Féin.