I’ve written in the past that immigration can be a thorny and controversial subject, and that can be still be true. However, what has been abundantly clear – as shown by poll after poll – in the past several years is that the vast majority of people feel that Ireland is experiencing too much immigration. That is not a controversial position, despite what the NGOs may say.
And this resistance is driven just by worries about resources or healthcare or housing: it is, at the most fundamental level, about enormous, almost unprecedented change happening to the country in a very short period of time, and about a growing sense of unease amongst Irish people in regard to the shift they can see happening before their eyes.
Demographics matter. The future does, in fact, belongs to those who show up. As my colleague Matt Treacy has pointed out repeatedly, some 22% of people who now live in Ireland were born overseas – and its estimated that inward migration will account for 93% of our population growth to 2057.
In the year to April 2024, the CSO says there were 149,200 immigrants to Ireland which was a 17-year high – and it was the third successive year where over 100,000 people immigrated here.
Just 30,000 were returning Irish in the period to April, while 34,700 Irish citizens left in that year. Our young people are leaving in droves – as are our doctors and nurses while we spend millions persuading foreign healthcare staff to come here. No-one with a working brain can seriously deny that the immigration surge is a huge factor in the spiral of the housing crisis into a full-blown emergency.
These are the facts, and facts, as the saying goes, are stubborn things. And it raises issues which have been barely discussed: such as whether we can keep issuing a seemingly limitless number of work permits to new arrivals in the same careless way that has been the practise until now without further unforeseen effects.
In truth, the numbers above are actually breath-taking. No serious country undergoing such radical change should have allowed a situation where any attempt to raise concerns or a debate about such seismic transformation was shouted down for too long as ‘racist’, employing the universal crybully tactics engaged to shut people up and cancel them into silence. (That is still happening, by the way: see how RTÉ gave the historically illiterate, useful idiots of Kneecap a prime spot to describe those who opposed mass migration as ‘far-right’ and being “full of shite”, because they are so articulate, supposedly.)
Therefore, it should be recognised that it was in the face of an undeniably oppressive stranglehold placed by the media and the political establishment on the immigration debate that those who firstly had concerns about IPAS centres being placed in their areas had the courage to began their protests. They recognised that there would be no consultation, just much scolding from all the political parties – yes, including you Sinn Féin – about vetoes and international obligations.
And they understood from the outset that they would be described as “scumbags” and “racists” and “dirtbags” by all the lovely, caring people not just on the liberal left, but in that cohort who presume to speak for working class people but who get mightily riled up when working class people actually dare to speak for themselves. That’s part of what really annoys many commentators who spend their time condemning or nit-picking at activists who have immigration concerns: they have the wrong accent; they wear the wrong clothes; they use the wrong language; if only they were more middle-class – even though that would likely mean being so hamstrung by the terror of losing respectability as to render them impotent.
This current wave of immigration protests began in East Wall, and before that in Oughterard, but it has spread to almost every corner of the country, and tens of thousands of people have been involved, meaning that this is a movement that has sprung up on a scale not seen since the water charges. In this regard, it is the very opposite of being ‘online’ – in fact, the country has been convulsed by protests. I’ve covered a lot of these meetings and public protests and spoken to the people involved: decent people with genuine concerns who had the courage to stand up for their families and their communities. (The distress of the lovely women in Santry who were knocked aside by Gardaí as they sat in peaceful protest stays with me, as does the sheer bewilderment of so many law-abiding ordinary people around the country who could not believe they were being battered down by their own government.)
A thousand people attended a meeting and marched in the small town of Rosslare in 2023 and then maintained a protest for an astonishing 463 days until An Bord Pleanana finally ruled that the Great Southern Hotel – which had been set to become a badly-needed nursing home – could not avail of the planning permission exemption to simply transition into an IPAS centre. Can you imagine the commitment that took, and the sheer difficulty involved in organising a protest that went on for 463 days? It’s reflection of how deeply felt and widespread local concerns were.
In Coolock, local people didn’t just protest and march, they also organised themselves to take a court case opposing the establishment of a massive asylum centre on the site of a the former paint factory in their community – an area already under resourced and forgotten by successive governments too busy lauding themselves as they rolled in corporation tax dollars which they should have had the foresight to realise was transient and unreliable. And in that undertaking, the people of Coolock had no access to legal expertise as the polite denizens of Ballsbridge had when using the courts to halt asylum seekers being landed in their area. They are to be lauded to the skies for persisting nonetheless.
It is my opinion that the deliberate misrepresentation, in the media and elsewhere, of the vast majority of the thousands who marched in that area by depicting them as some sort of hoodlums is to be expected, but nonetheless despicable. The same was done to the people of Roscrea and Newtownmountkennedy in order to justify the thwack of Garda batons brought down on their heads
In Carna, it seemed as if almost every person living in the village in the Conamara Gaeltacht packed into the community hall in Cill Chiaráin to demand that their only hotel be returned to them rather than become an IPAS centre. In the face of the promise of persistent protest, the application went away. Cllr Noel Thomas told me he was proud of the people of Carna for standing up to an irresponsible government. We should all be proud of them.
Thousands marched in small towns like Carrickmacross and in Letterkenny in recent weeks. Tens of thousands marched in Dublin, bearing a sea of tricolours. And this country is not alone in realising with some disquiet that a rapid change in demographics means we may also lose a sense of who were are, and who we have been – on this island, at least – for perhaps thousands of years. Culture and identity and nationalism matter. Why shouldn’t they?
In Denmark, the percentage of the population who are foreign born and their descendants was at 14% in 2021, which is much lower than in Ireland, but was a significant consideration in restricting immigration. Today, in the Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole recognises that it is English nationalism that is driving the success of Farage’s Reform. Every country has a right to feel it has nationhood – that we are not simply a dumping ground for globalism and international corporations eager to make a quick buck by driving wages down and rent up.
That anti mass-migration movement is mostly a nebulous collective, but they have been joined together for large events though they likely support many different small political parties or factions. But as a movement it is nationwide and vocal and often as diverse as the general population. It remains to be seen whether it will coalesce around one or several larger groupings which can achieve further political change.
I say further change because all those people who packed meetings and marched and protested and endured the might of the media and state being thrown against them did already achieve a realignment of political priorities. Most parties in the Dáil are now comfortable acknowledging truths about immigrations they would have described as “far-right” just a year ago. A political breakthrough, in terms of winning seats in the Dáil, is a very difficult task, though not impossible. All those who are working to achieve that should be commended.
It is deeply unfair to point to a few extreme examples to paint tens of thousands of decent Irish people, upset at what is happening to the country that they and they ancestors have been part of for generations, as extreme. It’s true that some extreme elements will attach themselves to every cause, and are a nuisance and deeply unhelpful. But that’s not what matters.
What matters is that those who courageously spoke up with genuine concerns and to great effect about the detrimental effect of uncontrolled mass migration on the country – and did so when it made them the target of establishment hatred – should be applauded.