Earlier this year, the ESRI reported that almost 20% of people living in Ireland are foreign-born. Immigration has surged in recent years, with migrants (often from safe countries) coming here to claim asylum adding to the already enormous numbers of people arriving from Ukraine.
Now, yet another opinion poll has found that a huge majority of Irish people think we have taken in too many refugees – and a similar number, some 76% of those polled – say they “can appreciate some of the anger people feel about asylum seekers being moved into their local area”.
The latest BP/Red C poll shows that 75% of people feel 'Ireland has now taken in too many refugees'.
Govt has been at pains to dismiss the “Ireland is full” sentiment – but research signifies the same attitude hasn’t trickled down to the public. How did we get here? A 🧵
— Business Post (@businessposthq) May 28, 2023
In its own analysis of the numbers, the Business Post pointed out that “Ministers have repeatedly blamed protests against asylum-seeker accommodation on fringe groups”.
“That is a warning to Government that there is a broad public acceptance that people can have legitimate concerns about the rapid establishment of some of the 145 new emergency accommodation centres since January last year,” the paper tweeted.
In truth, we shouldn’t need a poll to prove what is already blindingly obvious: that the Government and the supposed Opposition in Sinn Féin have been pursuing a reckless, dangerous, and short-sighted policy of opening Ireland’s doors to the world at a time when it is already failing Irish people in terms of housing, healthcare, education and much more.
For 15 months or more, the state and the media has taken a battering ram to its own people on immigration: dismissing valid concerns, demonising ordinary people who dared to protest, sending in Gardai to smash up the blockade of pensioners who said they were afraid of the consequences of having a centre for 300 strange men imposed on their area.
Carol Nolan TD was denounced by Fianna Fáil’s Darragh O’Brien last year when she asked a perfectly reasonable question as to whether the government had carried out an assessment to gauge if providing housing to tens of thousands of Ukrainians would impact negatively on the state’s ability to meet the existing demands of is own citizens.
O’Brien angrily hinted at ulterior motives and accused the Laois Offaly TD of “posing a risk to social cohesion”.
It was despicable stuff, but it set the tone for any discussion on the issue. There would be no cap on asylum seekers, agreed all the political leaders from Leo Varadkar to Mary-Lou McDonald.
Anyone who dared to disagree was going to be described as racist or far-right, and the media, whose job is supposedly to question those in authority, were in lockstep with the plan from the beginning.
Green Minister, Joe O’Brien, said “racism” was behind the decision of some accommodation providers to not accept asylum seekers, when discussing migrant housing in Kerry.
When Independent TD, Mattie McGrath called for a cap on asylum seekers, arguing “we can’t just have open borders”, he was attacked by Fine Gael Senator, Garret Ahearn, who said McGrath’s comments were a “disgrace” and accused the Tipperary TD of being out of touch with the majority of people on the issue.
Ahearn couldn’t have been more wrong. McGrath, as ever, had the pulse of the people on the issue.
Yet, taxpayer-funded NGOs rushed to stoke up fears of racism when it was rightly pointed out that many of the non-Ukrainian applicants were coming from safe countries such as Georgia and Nigeria.
The people of Inch were described as racist, and their blockade was roundly condemned by the establishment, including Minister Roderic O’Gorman and an Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar who insisted that no-one could have a veto on who came to live in their area. As was repeatedly pointed out on social media, it was strange that a veto of some sort seemed to exist for areas like Castleknock (Varadkar’s back yard) and Ballsbridge because migrant centres seemed curiously absent there.
And on it went: The locals in East Wall were supposedly ‘far-right’ and women in Ballymun were the same, and both communities were working-class anyway so you could say whatever you liked about them.
Sinn Féin, always attune to how the wind is blowing have been fairly subdued in the media on the issue of late, likely hoping to get a bounce their way if people express anger with the government’s immigration policy at the ballot box.
Yet Sinn Féin have been strident in the Dáil in criticising local protests, with Wicklow TD John Brady describing the 307 protests in the county on the issue in 2022 with similar numbers taking place so far this year as a “malignant presence”.
As the poll yesterday showed, he is at odds with some 76% of people in that regard.
Still, the party is now tip-toeing around the issue, with Mary-Lou McDonald denying she would give local communities a “veto” on who was being placed in their areas, but seeking to blame the government for lack of consultation.
She can stop pretending. Truth is, Sinn Féin were hand in glove with the rest of the establishment in shouting down the concerns of the majority of the citizens of the nation.
The accusations of racism; the demonization of ordinary people; the relentless criticism; it was all designed to batter the Irish people into submission, to force us to accept that we had no right to determine how many people can come to live here and when.
But it didn’t work. Sometimes a policy is so disastrously wrong, and the attempts to defend it so obviously weak, that even the combined forces of the political establishment and the media and what feels like every NGO in the country can’t provide enough spin and cover.
People believe the evidence of their own eyes. 15,000 migrants, many from safe countries, claiming asylum in 2022 – and that number to date is increased by another 8% to April 2023.
On this issue, this time, the battering ram rebounded. But with almost 90% of TDs in the Dáil holding a view entirely in opposition to a huge majority of the people, voters now need to decide who will represent them on this issue.