It has taken the government three and a half years to grasp what opposition TDs and many members of the public have been saying about immigration since the summer of 2022, one TD has said.
It comes after Minister Jim O’Callaghan told the Irish Times Inside Politics Podcast on Monday that high asylum seeker numbers are a threat to “social cohesion.”
The Fianna Fáil Justice Minister told the podcast that population growth is too high, putting services under pressure. Mr O’Callaghan said that fears regarding “a breakdown in social cohesion” have prompted the government to limit the number of people coming here to seek asylum.
Offaly Independent TD Carol Nolan criticised the timing of the comments, telling Gript: “While the government prioritised a touchy feely, bleeding heart approach to rampant and reckless immigration numbers, the rest of, who live in the real world could clearly see, years ago, the trajectory of where this was headed.
“It”s about time that government took its lead from the Irish people and not the asylum NGOs and hard left who have inexplicably been allowed to substitute de facto open borders rhetoric for reality.”
In June 2022, Fianna Fáil Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien TD accused Carol Nolan of posing “a risk to social cohesion” for raising issues in the Dáil over the inward migration of Ukrainian refugees.
At the time, Ms Nolan had asked if the Government had carried out an assessment on the State’s capacity ‘to deliver housing to its own citizens’ in light of the ‘enormous rise in inward immigration, international protection and asylum applications’.
“That risk will be massively increased and will continue to grow and become more widespread unless we seek to ensure that our barely functioning immigration system is brought under control,” she said in June 2022.
Mr O’Brien said: “The Government has been very clear, particularly regarding our response to our friends from Ukraine, we will take in as many Ukrainian citizens fleeing the brutal war foisted upon them through no fault of their own as we must. We will not introduce any caps in that regard.”
Mattie McGrath said he welcomed the comments from Minister O’Callaghan.
“I’ve been saying this for years. Minister O’Cllaghan’s comments are to be welcomed, as it makes a change from the approach of those in leadership for the last two and a half years. Of course we’re going to see a huge breakdown in social cohesion when the numbers coming here are unsustainable,” the Tipperary Independent said.
“I’ve been repeatedly condemned and criticised by those in Government for making fairly similar statements in recent years. In 2024, then Taoiseach Simon Harris called me “Trumpian” for saying that calls for debate had fallen on deaf ears. I am glad to see that the tone is changing. But we cannot forget that for years now, Government politicians have been part of the problem all along.
“Not allowing debate, not wanting debate, shutting down debate, and name-calling people looking for debate, such as myself and Rural colleagues.”
On Hugh Linehan’s podcast this week, Mr O’Callaghan said the time had come to be “frank” about asylum seeker numbers.
“But I have to be frank about it as well. Like, it’s a fine aspiration to say … we can welcome into Ireland everyone who wants to claim asylum. I can’t. That’s not realistic.
‘And I have to be careful that the numbers, which were exceptionally high last year − 18,500 people arrived last year − that those numbers are reduced as otherwise, we will have a breakdown in social cohesion. We will have tents on the streets. I know there are some, but we’ll have too many tents in the streets, and it’ll look like a system that the Government is not in control of.”
He added: “I’m not setting any numbers as a goal to get asylum figures down to. But what I do want to see is that there’s a system that is designed and is operating for the benefit of people who are fleeing persecution and war,” he said. “Those who want to come here to work have another method of applying, which is through the work permit application.”