Jim O’Callaghan, the new Justice Minister, has had some frank and refreshing things to say about immigration.
Over the weekend, he went onto RTE radio, where all grand government pronouncements are made. Here are some basic facts about radio interviews, for those of you who have never done one.
It is always the case that a radio interview of this nature is booked in advance. If you are an ordinary schmuck like me, you will get a call from a researcher seeking to book you for the show. The researcher will tell you what the programme wishes to discuss, and seek your opinions about the topic. This is so that they can prepare some show notes for the presenter, who will have a rough idea of what you are going to say, so that they can do some research and be prepared for your position. In turn the researcher will give you, the interviewee, some rough idea of any concepts or topics the interviewer might like to cover.
In the case of a Minister, who is not “some schmuck”, we can assume that the researcher calls the Minister’s advisor, who will then prepare notes and speaking points for the Minister. To cut a long story short: RTE will have known roughly what the Minister was going to say about migration in advance of the radio interview. And the Minister will have had some rough idea what the questions would be. I am not suggesting anything corrupt or inherently inappropriate here. I am simply making the point that all radio interviews, especially at this level, are somewhat stage-managed.
Here’s what the Minister said:
“Too many people are coming to Ireland seeking international protection, who are not entitled to international protection,”
The minister said last year, out of 14,000 applications, over 65pc were rejected at first instance. So far this year, more than 80pc have been rejected at first.
“The people who are really suffering are those who are legitimately entitled to claim it, who may not be provided accommodation because of the numbers that are coming in. That is an area I am not going to shy away from,” he said.
Mr O’Callaghan added that if an applicant is refused international protection “then you leave, you are gone”.
He also said that what he is not going to do, is “create as many accommodation spaces as possible for asylum seekers”.
I have taken the liberty of highlighting the bit in bold because I think it sums up the three-card-trick being played by the Minister, with the connivance of many in the media. “If an applicant is refused international protection, then you leave. You are gone”. It sounds tough, doesn’t it? It sounds almost like a new approach.
What it is, in fact, is a re-statement of current law.
That is to say, the entirety of the “International Protection System” is based on the idea that if you are refused international protection, then you leave. You are gone. This is not a new approach from the Minister. It amounts to the Minister telling us what the law is already.
A sharp interviewer might have noticed that and pushed the Minister on it. That is not what happened here. RTE’s interviewer just skipped past it, allowing the perceived “toughness” of the statement to hang in the air, unchallenged. This is why my pre-amble about how radio interviews are arranged, above, matters: There is no earthly way that RTE were unaware that the Minister would say something like that. The decision not to challenge it was a choice, not an error.
It was also a choice, frankly, for the rest of the media to cover the interview as they did. The Irish Times has told its readers that Minister O’Callaghan “signals a tougher line on migration”. RTE told its viewers and listeners and readers that the Minister had demanded an “efficient, effective” system. On and on it went, to the extent that the average person might have formed the view that Minister O’Callaghan had said something new.
Which of course was the point.
The Government and the media, for similar ideological reasons, have a shared interest in messaging that the Government is getting tougher on immigration. Both the first and the forth estates are looking around the European continent with mounting unease about public attitudes to this topic, and worried about contagion in Ireland. One way to head off contagion is simply for both media and government to adopt the fiction that Ireland is becoming a hard line country on the immigration issue, and one way to do that is to announce existing laws as if they are new.
Imagine, for a moment, that the media were to cover Minister O’Callaghan’s statements as they were: Minister says Government will finally enforce immigration laws.
That, one might think, might not provoke the same kind of reaction from the public as a perceived Ministerial crackdown.
My point here is this: The Minister went on radio to spin a line, and the national broadcaster facilitated it.
This is not to say that the new Minister might not actually follow through on his word, or that the Government might not actually shift policy in some meaningful way. But as of yet, none of that has happened. All that has happened is that some words have been said.
And, as George R.R. Martin noted in one of the disappointly few books he has completed, words are wind.