Watergrasshill, for those of you unfamiliar with the place, is a decently-sized town just north of Cork City, bypassed by the M8. At the most recent census, the population was recorded at 1,840.
That population is already substantial and has been fueled by seven-fold growth since 1996, making a place that feels much smaller than, say, Clones in County Monaghan, actually substantially larger in population terms. The reasons for this are the same as they are in many commuter belt towns around Cork and Limerick and Dublin: As the country’s economy has become more urbanised, the demand for housing for young families has disproportionately been provided by places like Watergrasshill, Naas, Newport, and Tuam, which have seen housing estates popping up offering families four bedrooms, a garden, and a manageable commute to work in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, or Galway.
Look at the map of the place and you’ll see the evidence of this: The old main street is now surrounded by a wide and growing circlet of purpose-built housing estates, most of which look the same as each other, with names like “The Meadows” and “The Lawn” and “Baker’s field” and “The Orch”, all within a few minutes of the motorway.
Across the M8, a business park provides some local employment, and a Karting track is within reachable distance for day-trippers and stag-partiers from Cork. This is a town built around the M8 and convenient access to that road, and which has grown on that basis.
As in many places, however, that rapid growth has placed strain on existing services. Search for a GP locally, and Google Maps will send you to Glanmire, a good half hour down the motorway.
On September 1st, a referendum of sorts will be held in Watergrasshill.
The impetus for this vote, per those organising it, is that the owners of a local pub and restaurant – The Fir Tree – have applied to Cork County Council for an exemption from planning permission because they wish to repurpose the building into a facility which can accommodate, on behalf of the Irish Government, an as-yet unknown number of international protection applicants. Those organising the referendum oppose this, and by holding a public vote on the matter, clearly hope to win the backing of the residents of Watergrasshill.
The public notice of the referendum makes no bones about the politics of those behind it: “Recent data has revealed that 85% of those arriving into Ireland to claim asylum do so with no valid identification” a leaflet promoting the referendum claims. “This means that these people are unvetted and unvettable. Almost 50% of these arrivals are single males”. (In reality, the 85% figure cited here refers to arrivals at Dublin Airport only).
Evidently, such a referendum is not official, and will have no legal basis (in fairness, the organisers of the vote do not claim otherwise). Instead, the hope appears to be to send a signal to the Government that the opposition to its immigration policy is broad-based and widely shared in Watergrasshill, while also permitting – nay challenging – those who support the policy to engage with the referendum and prove local campaigners wrong.
There are perhaps a few things to say about all of this, in no particular order:
First, as a matter of peaceful political and democratic protest and activism, there is much to be said for this approach in general: It promotes community engagement, allows all sides a say, and leaves the organisers of protest open to the risk of being exposed as a minority in their own community. As such the simple act of organising a public vote displays confidence in their own position, and puts them in the role of facilitators of democracy rather than simply participants in it.
Second, however, there are, clearly, legitimacy problems. First, it is unclear to me how the Government should react in the event of a 99% vote against its immigration policy on a good turnout by residents. Do towns have the right to opt out of national policy? Can my neighbours and I simply organise a referendum on, say, the Carbon Tax and refuse to pay it on the basis that we’ve collectively voted not to?
Relatedly, the legal question at stake here is surely not one on which there can be a vote: Either the existing law grants the pub owners a planning exemption, or it does not. That’s a matter of legal fact, not public democracy. The residents of Watergrasshill cannot, by themselves, abrogate national planning law, even if they vote to do so.
Third, there is evident political risk. Note well the figure at the top of this article: The population of Watergrasshill is 1,840 people, of whom we might assume something like 1,200 are adults of voting age. It seems to me very likely that the referendum will go the way the protestors expect – but what if the total vote is 150, or 300, with 90% in favor of opposing the migrant centre? Will people not fairly assume that the remainder of the electorate is apathetic on the central question, which amounts in practice to being in favour of the migrant centre? I fear a great many people would take such a result exactly that way.
Lest I seem like a negative nelly, I will say fourth, that there is real value in presenting this “referendum” not as a definitive democratic statement, but as a model for what a real public consultation would look like: Protesters and organisers can point to the fact that they are not afraid of consulting the residents of Watergrasshill for their views, but the Government is fearful of doing so. After all, does anybody seriously doubt what the result of such a consultation, using secret ballots, would have been in Roscrea, or Dundrum, or Coolock? “This is what Government should be doing but is too afraid to do” may well prove a better message than simply “Watergrasshill has said no”.
Fifth and finally, there are evident risks that some of those organising this vote may be over-zealous about securing a result that they desire. I asked some of the organisers this weekend for the steps they were taking to secure the integrity of the vote – for example, how will they prevent non-residents from voting?
The easiest way to do that would be to drop a polling card with an ID number into every household in Watergrasshill and make possession of that card necessary to vote. Instead, I am told, they will make people who wish to vote present their name and address and ID on arrival. It is not unreasonable to expect that many will decline to do so, for fear of ending up on an unwanted mailing list, or for fear of being seen to publicly support the organisers. These risks are probably unavoidable, but nonetheless real.
This is, I think, an imperfect but nonetheless interesting and potentially innovative approach. The “vote” is to be held on September 1st. How the results are presented, and the arguments made about them, will probably be more important than the result itself which is, I suspect, a foregone conclusion.