Minister Eamon Ryan was in fighting form yesterday in conversation with Jack Horgan-Jones of the Irish Times. Doing the patriotic duty of every Government Minister, he fired back at the hated far-right and asserted in the strongest terms that, contrary to various claims to the contrary, “Ireland is not full”:
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has said Ireland cannot turn its back on Ukrainian refugees, saying that Ireland is “not full”.
The Minister for the Environment said he “absolutely” backed comments by Tánaiste Micheál Martin, who argued that the Government had not done a u-turn on the plan to put single men who are seeking International Protection into a disused hotel in Ballinrobe, Co Mayo.
He said the situation was “very challenging” but “we can and will manage that, as a Government, and as a country – we’re not full”.
Mr Ryan said burning accommodation down when the number of beds were tight hinders the problem, arguing that solutions had to “work for everyone”, including local people and those arriving in.
“It’s going to be challenging for us, but we have to rise to that challenge, and we can as a country and as a people,” he said, pointing to other crises such as Covid and the cost of living.
He said there would be an effort in the coming weeks to explain “basic mechanics” of what happens in the migration process and “why we have to play our part”.
“We cannot isolate, shut our country off, say we’re not going to play our part in providing refuge where refuge is needed.”
You might notice that there’s something of a contradiction in the Minister’s position: If, on the one hand, Ireland is not “full”, then one wonders why it would be, as he keeps saying, such a “challenge” to keep accommodating people and find new places for those coming here in search of aid, shelter, or a better life. The two statements do not tally – or at least, they suggest that if Ireland is not full, then it must at least be close to full, otherwise finding accommodation would not be quite so challenging.
There’s another point though: In order for the Minister to determine that Ireland is not full, then it logically follows that he must have some sense of our national capacity to accommodate people, and be aware of how much “room” there is left. That is to say, if he’s certain that Ireland is not full, he must also be certain when Ireland would be full.
This is, when you think about it, a vital piece of public information. And it is arguably the piece of information that could settle the immigration debate, once and for all: Can the Government put an upper limit on the number of people it feels that the country can accommodate?
To date, it has resolutely refused to do so. Minister Ryan’s party colleague, Minister Roderic O’Gorman, has actually said that Ireland must be prepared to accommodate at least 15,000 extra people per year, though on the basis of the early figures for 2024, and the figures for the latter part of 2023, this appears to be an under-estimate of the numbers that will come.
In turn, this poses another question: Has the Government identified accommodation for 15,000 people in 2024? And if so, why can the public not be told where those 15,000 people are to live?
When I was on the Virgin Media Tonight show on Monday evening, the running theme of my fellow panellists, and the host, was that the Government has a communications problem around immigration. This writer is not entirely sure this is true – I think it more accurate to say that the Government has a policy problem. When your policy is that there are no limits on the number of people who may come, there are then no limits on your obligation to house people who come. This, at a very basic level, makes planning next to impossible.
But accepting for the sake of argument that the problem is communications, then surely this is the most vital thing to communicate: How many people does the Government think it can take, and where does it propose to put them?
I am being a little bit provocative to make a point: The Government cannot answer those questions for two reasons. First, because its policy prohibits it from having an answer: Saying we can take, for argument’s sake, 50,000 more people, effectively sets a limit on inward migration, which would be dreadful and far right, according to the holy writ of progressive thinking.
And saying where they might be accommodated risks protests, and a backlash, and political problems.
It is therefore a political necessity for Government to constantly pretend that Ireland is not full, and also that it never could be full. The concept of fullness itself is a crime against official policy on immigration because it concedes the principle that there might be a limit to the number of people we can take. Once you accept that, immigration policy must change.
This is the trap in which Ireland’s politicians have caught themselves: They say the country is not full, because they can say nothing else without changing their policy. It is increasingly like watching an episode of mass psychosis. At this stage, the only hope they have is that people stop coming here of their own volition. And there’s little chance of that.