The Rural Independent TDs this morning succeeded in having the Dáil debate, for the first time really since the circumstances surrounding the 2004 Citizenship referendum, the broader issues surrounding immigration into the Irish state.
The motion itself referred to the statistics regarding the level of inward migration, as well as the salient fact that, apart from Ukraine, none of the main countries of origin are home to wars or other large scale human rights crises that would justify the numbers that are currently accommodated by IPAS.
Laois/Offaly TD Carol Nolan was the first Rural Independent speaker and she set out clearly what she described as “the chasm between public and private opinion” on the issues around immigration. A Chasm and a lack of debate designed to avoid addressing the “unsustainable levels of inward migration” and its impact on a whole range of public and other provisions including housing.
Deputy Nolan noted that while attempts to discuss this issues had led to “finger-wagging” and lectures, that she had simply “urged Government of our need as a society to find some way of exploring in an adult, pragmatic and constructive way, the profound challenges that we were being confronted with in terms of unsustainable levels of inward migration and asylum into this state and in particular the impact this phenomenon was having on housing and the availability of emergency accommodation.”
Instead of listening to the concerns of communities, the state had doubled down on its policy, and “the situation since then has become immeasurably worse. Record inward migration is taking place in the same context as record breaking homelessness. The cold hard reality of these statistics reveal that the breaking point has not just been reached, it has been shattered.”
Other Rural Independent TDs pointed to the pressures that the crisis was having on communities, and that in the case of Kerry County Council and others there was an evident inability to cope. Michael Healy Rae illustrated the absurdity of the situation where 40% of people claiming asylum are allowed to do so having presented either no documentation or false documentation. He posed the rhetorical question as to whether Irish people would be allowed enter other countries in that way.
Such a debate is of course considered mostly to be “unhelpful” and the Government and opposition motions rehearsed that theme. In her contribution in moving the Government amendment, Minister Helen McEntee for the most part stuck to the script that you could nearly write yourself once she started off with a reference to “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish.”
As Cork TD Michael Collins pointed out, she had failed to address the issues that are of concern. She also, despite providing some rather weak evidence of how the state is beginning to impose restrictions, did not address the stark statistics around countries of origin, deportations and entering the country illegally before making an application at the International Protect Office. A distinction blurred by other speakers.
The most interesting contributions apart from the Rural Independents were from Sinn Féin. While Labour’s Aodháin Ó Ríordáin was content to launch a bizarre rant that appeared to imply that the Rural Independents were in some way on the same wavelength as the Dublin rioters; and while Holly Cairns of the Social Democrats doubled down on all of the dumbest NGO cliches, the Shinners are far more street wise.
That is why they have replaced both the soft liberal left and the far left – whose TDS reprised the same Pollyanna nonsense as Cairns, even name-checking Shane McGowan – as the most significant party on the left. Brid Smith’s celebration of mass immigration, and implicitly what that means for this country, is completely on par with the neoliberal funders of all of this who benefit from “the free movement of capital and labour.” The people the far left claim to “oppose.”
While the six Sinn Féin TDs were careful to tick the boxes of blaming “nasty actors” and the Government for the issues of concern in communities around immigration, they all of them stressed that they were not in favour of “open borders.” Which is quite a distance from when Mary Lou was stating that “Sinn Féin would not put an upper limit” on the numbers of people entering the state to claim asylum.
Either they support that, or they have decided on a more sensible approach if that is what was signalled by their contributions to the debate this morning.
Another theme among the Sinn Féin contributions was the number of companies, several of them large overseas businesses as Gript has pointed out, which are buying up hotels and guest houses with the intention of using them as refugee accommodation centres. Gript also reported on such a venture in Donegal by Vesada Private, who were welcomed to the area by Sinn Féin TD, Pearse Doherty.
Monaghan TD Matt Carthy referred to “nasty actors” who were using “genuine concerns” about immigration, and then went on to admit that those concerns including about deportations are based in fact. He also referred to the fact that there are “capacity issues,” which of course begs the question as to whether Sinn Féin will opt for “properly managed” asylum system, or devote even greater resources to catering for the unmanaged consequences?
So, we can see that the blanket derogatory attacks which we witnessed against such communities including by members of Sinn Féin appear to have been set aside. One wonders if recent polling figures are a factor in Sinn Féin’s clear shift to a more “For Roysh” stance?
In concluding a somewhat heated debate, Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath referred to the “twisted warped” attempts by some of those on the left to imply that he and the other Rural Independents and the motion were somehow responsible for or linked to the riots in Dublin.
McGrath also noted that there had been no quorum in the house for the first hour of the debate and that “not one backbencher” from any of the Government parties had turned up while the three ministers were speaking. Something which tells its own story perhaps about how the issue is actually regarded by their constituents.
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