There has been much reaction to reports of “new Irish” residents being added to the electoral register in time to vote in tomorrow’s European and local elections. Much of it is speculative regarding numbers as there is no means of determining who may have been placed on the supplementary register.
What we do know is that there are quite a number of people and groups basically boasting that they have helped to register “new Irish” residents and reports of this in the mainstream media are almost invariably of the happy clappy feelgood variety.
Indeed, far from the registration of non-nationals being some sort of For Roysh disinformation gambit, it has been outlets such as the Connacht Tribune yesterday which have emphasised that ethnic and dare one suggest racial aspect of what they report as the addition of 2,460 people to the electoral register in Galway City over the last weeks of May.
A major voter registration drive among ‘new Irish’ residents in Galway has helped to add almost 2,500 new voters to the city’s electorate.
Galway City Council confirmed that some 2,460 people were added to the electoral register ‘balancing list’ – formerly known as the supplementary register – over three weeks in May.
From May 3 to May 20 – just under three weeks, some 2,460 new voters were registered.
A source in City Hall attributed the increase to successful voter registration initiatives by individual politicians, and a media advertising campaign by the Electoral Commission.
It’s understood many of the new voters registered are migrants, including Ukrainian and International Protection applicants seeking asylum here.
Such sterling efforts – and its clear implication that a substantial and perhaps even the preponderant part of the newly registered are ’New Irish’ non-nationals – have been similarly celebrated in other parts of the state. Which begs the question as to exactly how many non-nationals have been newly registered so that they can vote tomorrow?
An extrapolation of the figures that have been mentioned in Galway, Clare and elsewhere if replicated across the state could amount to tens of thousands. This is a substantial block of votes particularly under the Proportional Representation system and particularly in the smaller electoral wards that elect local county and city councillors.
One news article featuring Emma Lane Spollen of the Ukraine Civil Society Forum, speculated that up to 50,000 Ukrainians could be first-time voters in the local elections – and that’s not counting those additional asylum seekers from elsewhere signed up by the likes of the Immigrant Council of Ireland.
Such votes might determine the destination of seats in places where residents of an accommodation centre have been placed on the register by the Immigrant Council of Ireland or whoever has taken it upon themselves to do so.
A tweet which reposted the report on the Galway registration certainly excited comment. Some have chosen to regard it as a good thing, while others have wondered whether it might even amount to interference in elections when organised by motivated groups, and whether such groups will also be organising transportation for their clients to polling stations.
Do NGOs in other sectors invest the same energy into ensuring that persons who are ”vulnerable” are similarly catered for in the exercise of their democratic rights? Are there campaigns to ensure that disabled people or old people or persons with learning difficulties are properly registered, or even that they might have transport available to them to bring them to a polling station?
I do not know. Perhaps there are, but I certainly have never heard of any NGO or political party boasting about having done so. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, have any of the parties of the Left which appear particularly keen on the drive to register the ‘New Irish’ done similar or proposed to do similar to register people living in working class estates even though by their own definition such voters would constitute their natural habitat.
Or might it even be the case, that they regard the ‘New Irish’ who have been registered by the left liberal advocacy NGOs as a counterbalance to what they fear might be a substantial working class vote for candidates who are critical of the manner in which asylum and the accommodation of asylum applicants has been handled, and been supported by all of the establishment parties?
In any event it can be argued that the term ‘New Irish’ in this context is a ridiculous descriptive. It is a bit like the ads that would have you believe that the attendance at Croke Park and Semple Stadium at the weekend will be in large part comprised of black people.
Not one immigrant of my acquaintance regards themselves as being Irish if they were born in another country and moved to Ireland when they were older. Perhaps their children will, who knows. I doubt, however, that the children of people from Poland or India or France will be any quicker to shed their identity than Shane McGowan was inclined to describe himself as ‘New English.’.
It is a particularly absurd descriptive for persons who are here to claim International Protection and are living in accommodation provided by IPAS. Why would anyone who has recently arrived from Nigeria or Palestine or Algeria or Pakistan suddenly have decided that they are Irish?
What is more, what possible insight or understanding of Ireland outside of an IPAS centre qualifies them to have an equal vote to an Irish citizen? Does anyone believe the canard that they are entitled to such “equality” outside of ideologically motivated NGOs who regard them all in the same manner as Victorian Protestant missionaries in Africa regarded the people they had decided to adopt and save?
And of course those politicians and parties whose utter cynicism in courting the votes of newly arrived asylum seekers would put the ward heelers of Tammany Hall to shame.