It is not for me to tell other journalists how to do their job but when Helen McEntee says, in the clip below, “you can’t tell millions of people who are fleeing starvation and war and many other crises not to seek a better life” one might have thought an obvious riposte would be the word “why” followed by a question mark.
Helen McEntee is, we might sometimes forget, the Minister for Justice of Ireland, not the Minister for the rest of the world. Her obligations are to this country, not the world’s tired huddled and teeming masses, eager for accommodation on our shores.
This is not to say that Ireland should not admit any migrants. Listen to her carefully in the clip above: Until relatively recently, this country was accommodating, in relatively good order, three to four thousand such people every year. But then listen to her even more carefully: Those numbers have quintupled during her time in office and the only solution that she proposes here is to hire more staff to process them.
More bureaucracy: The single transferable solution to every problem.
But of course, the problem is not the speed at which this country processes migrants, but how attractive our system is to them. The public, according to most polls, do not want migrants processed more efficiently. Instead, they want fewer migrants.
Fine Gael – and Helen McEntee could not be clearer on this, as Deputy Leader – has no plans to deliver on that objective.
This country, it is true, does not have the right to deny anybody the right to apply for asylum here. The right to seek asylum is guaranteed under, amongst other things, articles 18 and 19 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
However, the right to seek asylum does not and never has conferred a right to be granted asylum. The criteria we use to grant people asylum is, largely, a matter for this state and for other sovereign states. That is one reason why Denmark accepts so many fewer migrants seeking asylum than Ireland does.
The Danes, for example, do things very differently than Ireland does. Migrants seeking asylum there with cash or other valuables in excess of €1,300 or so are expected to pay some of their own costs. Those whose applications are denied are immediately detained, pending deportation, which is not the situation here. Those who voluntarily return to their home country are given what effectively amounts to a bribe of around €20,000, but on condition that they can never apply again. This might seem expensive, but it is significantly less than the cost of accommodating them long term.
What’s more, Denmark ranks asylum seekers by tiers of risk. Those who it decrees to be at the lowest level of risk are entitled to nothing more than food and a bed, and receive no financial supports from the state. All of this means that coming to Ireland as an Asylum seeker is vastly more attractive than going to Denmark.
But to listen to Minister McEntee, one might have the impression that immigration and asylum is simply a matter beyond the control of the Government – something that has happened to us rather than a set of policy decisions enacted which have encouraged it.
Over the last four years, this outlet has repeatedly highlighted and reported on the various problems which have led to this situation, up to and including the situation which persists to this day of people presenting in Dublin without passports or documentation and being effectively rewarded by the Government for committing a crime.
We have covered Ireland’s remarkably generous benefits and accommodation system, and the impact that this has had on often deprived communities. We have covered the protests and discontent and public disorder that has arisen from the Government’s policies. We have reported on Minister McEntee’s unwillingness, alongside the rest of the Government, to toughen up our laws in any meaningful way.
We have also highlighted the farce that is the Government’s deportation system, which for many years has relied on people choosing to deport themselves, rather than being escorted across our borders and back to their own countries by the Irish state. This issue, too, is largely unchanged.
It is very clear, however, from the clip above that the Government intends little change long term to the problem that it has encouraged to arise. The Minister implies that millions of people have the right to come here if they wish. She is wrong. They do not.
One of the foremost reasons for having a state in the first place is to have borders which the state can control, meaning that the Irish people have a fundamental right to decide who enters our territory and for what purpose. This is a right that is not abrogated by membership of the European Union, as evidenced by the Dutch Government’s decision this week to erect border crossings on its land borders with other EU member states.
The Minister would have the public believe, as they go to vote, that there is little more the Government can do to reduce the number of people coming here. She is being flatly dishonest.
If the electorate wishes to reward her and her party for that dishonesty, that is one thing. But it should do so with eyes wide open, and not be taken for fools.