At the time of writing, this is my third attempt to write a piece about the Government’s announcement yesterday that it will be slashing the welfare payments made to Ukrainian refugees in Ireland by about 80%. The reduction in their weekly payment from €232 to €38 will constitute, if finalised, the single largest welfare cut by any Government targeted at any group in the history of the state.
I confess, I find writing about it difficult because generally the safest way to navigate the twists and turns of Irish policymaking is to view them with amusement rather than anger. In this case, there is much to be amused by: The sight of a government that would have denounced such a proposal as the height of far-right cruelty just weeks ago now embracing it is all the evidence you’ll ever need that we are governed not only by buffoons, but by dishonest and unprincipled buffoons.
And yet, I am not amused, but angry.
Angry because we’ve been told for years that the far right are people who would brutalise and discriminate against migrants to win votes – by the same people now shamelessly brutalizing and discriminating against migrants to win votes.
Angry because frankly, it’s embarrassing to invite people into our country on the basis of an unsustainable and unkeepable promise to them, only to turn around and upend their lives and their incomes the moment that promise becomes difficult for Government to keep.
Angry because lots of us pointed out that the promises they were making were unsustainable and unwise to begin with.
Angry because we didn’t even keep the idiotic promises we made: Remember, this Government that now apparently wishes Ukrainians to go home, but hasn’t the courage to ask them directly to leave, first told the world that it would accept up to 200,000 people from that country, but finds that it cannot cope with half that number.
Angry because as ever, all this stupidity is cloaked in the emperor’s new cloth of virtue: Rank foolishness enacted in the name of compassion and being just better people than your critics.
Angry in particular at the Minister for Housing, who stood in the Dáil almost two years ago and told Carol Nolan that raising concerns about the very policies the Government are now reversing was “undermining social cohesion”. I think Darragh O’Brien is a decent enough man. He should have the decency to apologise to Deputy Nolan, and to the rest of the country.
Angry at the media, who have published, at a rough estimate, forty thousand times more articles about the “rise of the far right” than they have about the frankly idiotic government policies underpinning that phenomenon. Very few of our most senior journalists appear to have had the basic wit to wonder what was driving previously moderate people to adopt more radical views on immigration. The media in this country abdicated its basic function years ago, which is a large part of the reason why Ireland finds itself in this mess.
Angry at the cowardice: If you’re one of the myriad Government TDs who have whinged privately about this policy for years, and confided to me and countless others that you thought it would end in disaster, I am angry at your cowardice. You are a public representative, and yet you did not represent the public. Instead, you kept quiet in public to represent your party’s interests. You do not deserve the seat in which you sit.
Angry because this is what they think of us now, these same politicians: That the Irish public are hankering for a bit of meanness shown to Ukrainians, rather than fairness. In my experience what drove people mad was not that Ukrainians were receiving the same welfare as Irish people, but that they were getting more: Housing allowances, college allowances, and medical supports not available to the local population. The public wanted fairness, and once again that has been mistaken for a bloodthirsty cruelty.
Angry because, frankly, I’ve been around the block long enough to know that much of this won’t really matter: The Irish people have so few options that the majority of those responsible will keep their seats in our national legislature, and the usual parties will win the most seats on the councils, and aside a few shocks to the system, politics will survive it largely as normal.
Yesterday, I heard tell of a politician who went to a door in Cork and received the most frightening dressing down from a voter: The voter’s son had given up hope of buying a home in Ireland, and is to leave her and their family for a new life in Australia. “I hate this country”, the voter told the aspirant politician.
She’s not alone. The people who have brought the country to this juncture should hang their heads in shame.