The Irish Left – which largely lives in an imaginary mystical Lollipop land where the clock stopped in 1936 in a Disney fantasy scene taken from a Christy Moore ballad – is fond of cliches. One of its most cherished being that all who are critical of current immigration practices are “in the pockets of the wealthy.”
A far better case could be made for the opposite but that would be equally cliched, although not so much. One only needs to look at the origin and destination of much of the foundation and other funding not only for leftist NGOs, but even left political organisations, to see that.
A much more precise, and irrefutable, claim can be made which is that the main representatives of the Left and the main representatives of Irish Capital are singing from the same hymnal on immigration – both the immigration of persons seeking International Protection and those who come here to work. This has again been shown recently in a statement from Chambers Ireland.
Now if the Irish Left has semi-plausibly mythologised its connection with the Irish Revolution of the first decades of the 20th Century, you are less likely to find Chambers Ireland asking the Bould Christy to pen a tune for them. Reimagining that would be too much even for a chap who once put Connolly and Pearse in the same verse as the American jail psychopath George Jackson.
Chambers Ireland officially dates itself to 1923 when it became the solid voice of the Protestant bourgeoisie facing the unfortunately unrealised threat to their economic and financial power from the new state. It was the central voice – as it still is – of the Chambers of Commerce of the cities and towns of the 26 counties. There are 37 of them.
The most powerful of these in 1923 was the Dublin Chamber of Commerce which, in the Irish Times of May 6 1916, recorded its censure of Dublin Castle for its “unpardonable laxity” in dealing with the Fenians. Presumably the executions which had begun on May 3 settled queasy loyalist stomachs around Ballsbridge and Kingstown.
The Chambers Ireland submission last month on the Department of Social Protection Strategy could largely be taken – and not just on immigration policy but with its nods to the needs of various other “unrepresented groups” – from the manifesto or budget submission of any trade union, leftist NGO or political party. Or indeed any of the Dáil parties across the spectrum come to think of it.
Cutting to the chase, however, what Chambers Ireland and the people they represent are in the business of doing is lowering costs. Which is why they favour measures that will allow “Ireland” – ahem – to “fully capitalise on the potential of people seeking international protection.”
They are also of course advocates of further liberalisation of the work permits system. They have welcomed the “increased resources that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment have allocated to permits,” and successfully, along with the other business organisations such as ISME and IBEC, they have lobbied for “more flexible visa processing” including the granting of visas to persons connected to the work permit holder.
The Left, including the unions, are weak as milk water on all of this. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) issued a 2021 document which noted all the obvious flaws the permits system has for the domestic work force and even the long term health of the domestic economy but concluded with the cop out that “ICTU is strongly of the view that non-EEA workers on work permits have played and will continue to play an important and positive role in the Irish economy.”
Dáil PQ lists have myriad questions from TDs of all parties asking about speeding up permits and residency and visas connected to them. The Left will occasionally rabbit on about exploitation of foreign workers without ever turning their eyes to the elephant in the corner of who and what is behind much of the blatant exploitation that does occur – as highlighted recently here by Niamh Uí Bhriain in relation to several cases before the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC.)
The ICTU and the Left parties do not share the Chambers Ireland critical position on the Minimum Wage but their support for all other things they share in relation to immigration – whether of persons claiming asylum or on work permits and the claims to residency of dependents of both – make the undermining of the working and social and housing conditions of Irish working people inevitable.
Returning to the work permits. This is and will increasingly become the main driver of immigration. Chambers Ireland as we have noted is very much for the system which will bring somewhere in the region of another 40,000 workers as well as an unquantifiable number of dependents into the state in 2025.
And why wouldn’t they be? Many of their affiliates are leading beneficiaries of the system, not least the Dawn Meats group of which Chambers Ireland director Paul Nolan is Group Development Manager. According to the company itself it currently employs 1,800 people in Ireland. How many of them are Irish given that since 2019 Dawn Meats and Dawn Farm Foods have been issued with 2,232 work permits for persons coming to work for them from outside of the EU and EEA?
SIPTU, the largest of the ICTU affiliate unions, represents workers in Dawn Meats. A perusal of online comments from people who work or have worked for the company would not suggest that they are doing a great job. Among the complaints are low wages – operative rates seem to range between €19,000 for young entrants and €28,000 – no training and that the company “survive from foreign workers.”
The benefits of “free movement of capital and labour” for Me but not for Thee ….