One in four Irish people now list immigration as their number one issue for politicians heading in to 2024. That was just one of a series of brutal findings for the Government – and indeed the wider political and media class – in the latest Ireland Thinks series for the Sunday Independent over the weekend.
One way of measuring the problems for the political class, I think, is to gauge the difference between how many people are internalising their messaging, and how many people appear to be rejecting it. A good way of measuring this is to compare the number of people in Ireland who say that the number one issue facing the country is “the rise of the far right” versus the number who say it is immigration, since it’s fair to say your attitude to one of these issues likely influences your attitude to the other.
As it happens, the results are clear: 13% worry about the rise of the far right. 25%, almost double that, worry more about immigration. Which is almost a picture-perfect reversal of what you might expect those concerns to be, if you got your news solely from reading mainstream Irish newspapers or listening to mainstream Irish radio, where concerns about immigration are generally presented as the preserve of the far right, and concerns about the rise of the far right are generally presented as the obligation of decent people.
What’s more, when you get into the weeds on immigration, it gets much worse: 25% of people say it is their top issue, but local community opposition is much, much deeper: 45% admit in the poll that they would be concerned about the imposition of a migrant accommodation centre in their community, against 41% who would not be concerned. That tends to strongly undermine the already wobbly insistence from many quarters that local opposition to such centres is the result of some kind of far-right infiltration.
Is there extremism? Well, some: 12% of the public say that they’re entirely unconcerned about the burning of migrant accomodation centres, which is an extraordinarily high number. 48%, meanwhile, express outrage at such actions, which is – when you think about it – actually an extraordinarily low number.
The biggest winners politically in the poll were also telling: Independent candidates are up 3% to 17%, and while Independents are not exclusively the repository of anti-immigration voters, they’re about as close as we get in Ireland at the moment. The two civil war parties, meanwhile, are down an identical amount.
The scariest thing for the Government in all of this is that there is no reason to think these concerns have peaked, or are likely to ebb away: Already in 2024, we have had the Minister responsible for much of the management of immigration, Roderic O’Gorman, pledge the construction of multiple new accomodation centres, and noises from him that suggests he expects a further 15,000 people this year at minimum, meaning that it is inevitable that more and more communities will experience their own immigration flashpoints. If past is prologue, these local incidents tend to radicalise communities, and not in the direction of being more concerned about the “far right”.
What’s more: the top issues in the poll are not immigration, but two issues related to it. Housing, and the cost of living. The danger for the Government is that housing becomes increasingly linked in the public mind to immigration, to the extent that it is not already so connected. This connection will be harder and harder to deny as more Government resources are poured into accommodating migrants in 2024 while thousands of Irish people struggle to get onto the property ladder.
And there’s a final weakness: At 44%, believe it or not, Micheál Martin is the most approved-of politician in the Dáil, followed by Holly Cairns of the Social Democrats on 40%. Nobody else breaks 40% in terms of the public thinking them, in effect, a decent skin.
These numbers are historically low. For context, here are the party leader satisfaction ratings from an Irish Times poll in 2002:
Bertie Ahern’s own rating, however, has gone up by four points to 68. Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has a 56pc rating, two ahead of Mary Harney, who dropped by five points to 54pc. Ruairi Quinn has the approval of 41pc, while the Green’s new leader, Trevor Sargent, has a 35pc rating.
Think about that: On a bad day for her, Mary Harney was 12 points more popular in 2002 than any Irish party leader is today. And Mary Harney, it is fair to say, was not a beloved politician.
This is a Government – and in fact an entire political class – with very low levels of respect and admiration from the public by historical standards. They are not well positioned to face into the headwinds of the year to come, either on immigration, or frankly on any other issue.
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1 WHO treaty power grab 2 Hate speech 3 digital slavery 4 immigration 5 woke distractions..in order of urgency.?immigration possibly uppermost on people’s minds as 100s being fousted on communuties on a weekly basis
Surely you are more concerned about an anomaly in the Constitution that says women should be kept in the kitchen rather than the government banning free speech ?
Quick – we have a provocateur from ‘The North’ wielding sarcasm with intent to Hate !!
The immigrant crisis is another distraction for the upcoming May acceptance of the WEF/WHO treaty power-grab. The probable US war with Iran, for which the Neocons are already blaming on Biden will also cloud it over! Unfortunately for Varadkar, the Irish have reacted too quickly to the crisis, which was unexpected!
The only thing brutal enough would be their removal from power and thrown into mountjoy for the rest of their lives.
If I had a brother or sister or cousin or other relative with children who were homeless at the very least I would accommodate and care for the children till the parents got themselves sorted out. How many of these are from single parent families and what has become of the other parent and that person’s responsibility? All children have one or more grandparents – where are they? Why is the state so insistent on Rights but never on Responsibilities?
Sorry, I posted this under the wrong article. It should have been under Ben Scallan’s article: AS IRELAND’S HOMELESSNESS RATE SURGES
Can’t wait to vote out the useless politicians and hopeful the new government will reverse the vast majority of actions taken by this historically inept government.
Not inept my friend,,CROOKED
No one interested in Ben Scallan’s stated number 1 election issue: How many genders do the candidates there are ????????. My fav X post of last year: Conservative Ireland summed up in a nutshell.
Globalists are all traitors. Simple. To obligate powers outside the electorate of any country, is conspiracy to treason. The Irish never agreed to Migration Pacts and more Globalist parties have signed Ireland up to.
The Swastika faces both ways, left and right… with Nazis in WEF, Davos in the centre.
All Globalists are one party WEF. Left and right, Swastika is both ways.
To obey Nazis in Davos, is not only a treason to your country, but also to yourself as a person. As all any free human being wants is self autonomy.
2024, no more globalism.
FF has had very few core values – which is why – up to 2011 – it could hide behind a very generalised “We can manage the economy” type slogan for success (though its ability on that front was badly shaken – long before the 2008 crash – with its infamous 1977 manifesto). FG, too – but more recently – has not been keen on articulating any long term vision for the Nation (though it has nailed its colours to the mast of “progressiveness” on social issues to an extent that people like the former leader Liam Cosgrave would hardly recognise the party now). Anyway all this is by way of saying FF and FG will have no problem “turning” on the issue of immigration – opportunism and saving their political necks will account for that. Of course neither party will admit – once -they’ve “turned” – that it’s a U turn – Varadkar’s successor will speak some BS that the “evolving situation” and “listening to the People” explain the “new approach” !