Letter to the Editor: Céad Míle Fáilte how are ye!

As a native of Roscommon, I disassociate myself from the sentiments voiced at the recent IPAS rally in our county town. 

The said rally did one good thing: it dispelled the myth that we are an Ireland of the hundred thousand welcomes! Céad Míle Fáilte how are ye!

In the mid- nineteenth century, Ireland had a population estimated between 8-9 million (Cormac Ó Grada: “The Population of Ireland, 1700-1900: a survey). In the census of 1851 the population of Ireland was recorded as 6.5 million. The current population of the Republic of Ireland is 5.5 million based on the census of 2022. Even taking Irish emigration and the inevitable boom-and-bust economic cycles into account since 1851, who would be surprised if the population now might not be close to double the figure for 1851? The Netherlands is approximately the same area as Munster with a population in 2023 of 18 million! The aforementioned 2022 census identified 163,433 vacant houses or apartments countrywide. Yet we’re expected to believe we live in a “full” country?

Who do the banners refer to? The Filipino nurse who takes care of your family member? The Pakistani doctor you meet in your local surgery? The Afghan asylum seeker who has a right to stay in Ireland while his/her application for refugee status is being deliberated upon?

For the record, as recently as September 2024, there were 32, 000 persons living in IPAS accommodation. By contrast, Sudan and Haiti have INTERNALLY displaced populations of 14 million and 1 million respectively. Marchers would have us believe WE have a problem?

The said marchers might also benefit from some study of the effects of 19th/20th century colonialism on countries of the global south, particularly African countries, and thus come to the conclusion that there are very good underlying causes for migration from many of these countries. If they grow tired of history they might spend some time studying how the wealthy northern hemisphere’s 75% of global cumulative carbon emissions contribute to a warming planet to the detriment of poorer southern countries least responsible for such emissions. As long as this latter injustice continues, there will be immigration from south to north.

One speaker opined that “western values” would be undermined by IPAS seekers coming from non-Christian countries. Was the speaker implying that people living here now, holding faiths other than Christian or no faith at all, were undermining our republic? Not so very long ago those “values” encompassed corporal punishment in schools, the incarceration of women in Magdalen laundries, the forcing of women from the workplace on marriage and illegal adoptions abroad. I’m reminded of the 1913 Dublin Lock-out and Jim Larkin’s comment that “It was a poor religion that couldn’t stand a fortnight’s holiday in England”, referring to the sending of starving Dublin tenement children for respite with English families. More recently, the almost deafening silence of “western values” on the genocide of the Palestinian people is shameful.

The website gov.ie states: “State-owned sites around the country are being developed to provide emergency tented accommodation, prefabricated and modular units” as part of its Comprehensive Accommodation Strategy for Internal Protection. The marchers would do this republic a real service if they would turn their undoubted energy to pressurising government into building properly constructed and staffed IPAS centres, government-run on state-owned land and thus rule out the issue of private landlords enriching themselves.

Finally, if President Donald J Trump ever turns his attention to the thousands of undocumented Irish in the USA (you think that’s an impossibility?), will we see the Tricolours and “GET THEM OUT” banners at Dublin and Shannon airports telling the newly arriving white immigrants to go back to where they came from?

Yours,

Jim Waldron,

Athleague