Time for a zero refugee policy? - *Read OP for mod warnings and threadbans - updated 11/5/24*

Oh no, not white man's burden at all — simply an appreciation for how the world has always worked (people gravitate towards where they believe there is prosperity), combined with the Western upholding of the rule of law and individual rights, easier and safer travel between countries, and the fact that all these things combined mean that in the absence of us adopting policies to mercilessly brutalise migrants and refugees it's probably more logical all round that we try to make the best of it. But making the best of it is simply never going to mean that we strike the perfect balance between what is absolutely best for Ireland and what avoids the inflicting or exacerbation of the suffering of people who have done nothing to deserve it.

Does this include the chancers, the country shoppers, the unskilled economic migrants coming here under dubious pretenses? Are we hellbent on importing an underclass and a different one with extra social issues for Ireland? Is that making the best of it? Have we learned nada from other's experiences? It seems not, as others are seeing their mistakes and tightening up, while we throw the doors open. Japan has the rule of law and individual rights and safer travel between countries. They don't feel the need to look after the world on the back of some misplaced charity. They care more about Japan and the Japanese. And they're right.

So it's all well and good to call O'Gorman a gobshite for the stunning intellectual crime of failing to get it all right in the aftermath of a global pandemic shutdown and one of the most significant displacements of people in Europe since the Second World War and our first experience of such a surge of refugees since we became a wealthy country capable of playing a more contributory role — but show me the person who would have nailed this with nothing but universally good outcomes for Ireland and maybe I'll vote for them.

Covid is long over as an excuse. Indeed the same shutdown should have given ample time to actually work out better practices. The previous governments handled the Syrian refugee crisis well enough and that war was as destructive and had similar numbers of refugees. Previous people in his post didn't send out flyers across the interwebs in different languages to come to Ireland promising fast tracking and open door accommodation within months, most of which were languages of known sources of scammers, sources that even Varadkar namechecked. You couldn't make it up. Only O'Gorman did. He made Ireland, already a soft touch, softer than a nonagenarian's knob on.

O'Gorman another of the happy clappy Green party, the majority of whom are clearly out of their depth and hardly a week goes by without one of them dropping a clanger of surreal daftness. They also know they're pretty much history after the next election. I'm an environmentalist to my marrow and I can understand some in leafy suburbia who make sure they put the right things in the right coloured bins might have voted for them in the past, but in my humble anyone who votes for them now is either a close relative, deluded, or a smoothbrained imbecile.

If the stance of the EU is hardening, so be it. Better approaches are needed to try identify those cheating the system, but likewise there needs to be an appreciation that a collaborative sharing of the burden is a better way forward than allowing a small host of countries to do it all for us. I dare say thought, regardless what way it goes, it isn't going to appease those who believe that assisting refugees is contingent on ensuring that it neither disrupts, exacerbates or creates any domestic issue in Ireland.

Or, crazy idea, go the Australian route and across the EU with it. For a start the numbers of ships sinking and people drowning fell off a cliff after they changed things around.