As European Justice Ministers meet today in Luxembourg to discuss how to handle the escalating migrancy crisis, the Irish state is already considering punishing us for not accommodating more migrants – despite efforts to go beyond their desire and capacity to comply with the push to facilitate mass immigration.
Last night the Irish Independent reported that the government was being asked by Ministers Roderic O’Gorman’s and Helen McEntee to agree to pay a fine of €1.500,000 to the EU, because it is unable to provide accommodation for 350 non-Ukrainian refugees who the Government, perhaps feeling particularly generous after a round of calvados at an earlier EU hootenanny, voluntarily agreed to take on top of unlimited numbers fleeing the war in parts of Ukraine.
You are reading that correctly, by the way. The government, due to the actions of O’Gorman and McEntee, are now voluntarily handing over €1.5 million of your taxes to the EU because they made a commitment they didn’t have to make and couldn’t keep.
This is a consequence of the Voluntary Solidarity Mechanism which was signed on June 22, 2022. Ireland was one of the 18 EU member states to sign up to this at a time when they ought surely to have already been aware of the problems associated with their open-ended commitment to take in unlimited numbers of people from Ukraine.
What makes the current embarrassing position even worse is that the EU itself in framing the VSM acknowledged that “some signatory Member States (of the European Pact on Migration and Asylum) may determine that they are not in a position to contribute to the present mechanism due to the disproportionate pressure they encounter.”
In other words, the Irish representatives signed up to a pig in a poke with no motivation other than to engage in more virtue signalling. Or do I misjudge them? Are their constant efforts to be the Best Him/Her/They in the class motivated by something else? Little thanks they get for it anyway, because now they have to fine themselves – well YOU in fact – for failing to make good on their pinky promise. And like bold Hims/Hers/Theys they will slope off to Luxembourg and apologise to “Europe” for our slack ways.
Given the daily reports of the migrant asylum accommodation crisis, the realisation that the state cannot cope is not then something, as claimed by Minister Michael McGrath on radio this morning, that has only impinged upon their consciousness in recent months.
Much of the drive behind all of this comes from a European Parliament that is dominated by parties of the centre and far left who, for reasons of securing cheap labour or in pursuit of some absurd social engineering or socially disruptive agenda, are using the meaningless concept of “solidarity” to soft soap Europeans into accepting it.
EU law does not define the notions of ‘solidarity’ or ‘fair sharing of responsibilities’ for refugees or asylum-seekers. This has prompted EU institutions, academics and other stakeholders to propose different ways to render solidarity more operational; these include sharing out relevant tasks and pooling resources at EU level, and providing financial and other forms of compensation for frontline Member States.
We are going to see more of this after today as EU Justice Ministers meet in Luxembourg to discuss further measures to deal with the migrant crisis which saw almost one million new requests for asylum in 2022, with several hundred thousand detected illegal border crossings.
Among them are a proposal that states will have to pay €20,000 for each migrant who they cannot accommodate as part of the targets to be imposed. The targets are part of the scheme to relocate 100,000 migrants among the member states.
You would imagine that Ireland will oppose all of this on a day that they have told us they are already going to fine us for failing to live up to their absurd commitments to their masters in Brussels.
But you would be most likely in error, as they never dissent from the most extreme plans to flood Europe with migrants. They will hardly do otherwise today. We shall be reporting on this tomorrow.