Immigration to Ireland - policies, challenges, and solutions *Read OP before posting*

So you are looking at this from a purely 'practical' perspective, just thinking what is best for these people?

Better for them to stay in their own countries, I suppose, is it?

Yes and work to make them better places. That is the primary duty of any citizen - to contribute to their state of birth and leave it a better place when they die.

Whatever your thoughts on immigration, pro, anti or not bothered, the demographics of the country are changing rapidly.

Now we were an economic backwater with little immigration, but I wonder are there many other examples around the world of countries going from 99% native population, to 77% in the space of 20 years or so.

It's a huge change, whatever your standpoint on it.

"New specifications for Leaving Certificate Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese were launched in 2020."

Thats from the NCCA. re languages.

Also History at LC level studies European, American and Worldwide pre and post modern. Has done for a good few years now, I think?

Again all available on the NCCA website.

Well, are the Irish people even interested in preserving Irish culture?

I've said it a thousand times, the Irish culture of today is vastly different to that of our grandparents and even our parents. The Irish people of yesteryear would be horrified at the agnostic, atheistic, gay-embracing, abortion-legalising, church-hating people we have become. The biggest cultural changes in Ireland over the last 30 years have been driven by better education, higher levels of prosperity and the rise of the technological society.

Having said that, I do actually believe that fostering things like the Irish language, Gaelic games and a general shared sense of collective identity is important for our country in the modern world. Personally, I would have the government put that right near the top of the agenda — a second Gaelic revival to promote shared cultural unity among those who grow up on this island regardless of their parent's origins.

If people want to preserve the Irish identity, they need to embrace the wider inclusivity of that identity – or they ironically are killing it.

We are changing. Every society has to grow and evolve. Or it faces stasis maybe even extinction.

But our experience here to date in the main has been positive with new people settling and integrating well.

This does not mean giving up their original culture and religion but most love Ireland and the positive feeling they get living in Ireland. Those that came here that we know are working and are lovely hardworking family people.

My children are all young adults now having grown up in a mixed community, going to school and college with people from different cultures and countries.

Their grandparents didn't look at them as children growing up with no Irish culture, on the contrary.

But I can see they have an acceptance of everybody and an enrichment in their experiences, which we did not have (nor did we miss as we were unaware of it) growing up.

I do think outside of the cities people have not had this experience and many people are afraid of the unknown.

It is a big change I agree, and our country has lots of issues with lack of housing and services all that we had before, but are highlighted now with more people coming here either working or seeking asylum.

But saying that people of a different race or culture don't integrate is a blanket statement that is untrue, in my experience.

That is not to say that those problems of integration don't exist in other countries. They do.

We want to avert that. That is why as I pointed out earlier it is important that from the school curriculum up we need inclusivity.

We don't have to jettison any of our culture.

Funny to see this post.

I replied to one just before this where the worry is about our culture being altered with immigration, but apoarently wealth doesn't affect it at all :)

I suppose you can pick and choose what will have the bigger influence!

On that point, I was at a small event with a client of ours in work last week — a tech company which as you'd expect has a pretty international demographic in its workforce in Dublin. I was talking to some of the foreign staff who were now settled in Dublin, raising kids here etc and was just refreshingly taken aback by how positively they speak about Ireland, its society and people — how good it is to raise kids here.

There is so much negativity these days about the country, some of which is well-justified but when it's non-stop from certain people just comes across as incessant moaning, entitlement and whingeing. I'm guilty of it myself too. I came home after the event and said to my girlfriend, who is usually my partner in crime when we have a "whinge about the country" session, that it was just like getting one of those cold face cloths at the front desk of a nice hotel in a hot country to actually hear people talking about Ireland in a net positive way again.

I asked one guy did he not absolutely hate the weather, his response was "sometimes, but the people are the sunshine". I'd normally find that corny but f**king hell it was just nice to hear someone say something good. There are a lot of us, including me, who could actually take some lessons from our foreign-born neighbours.

Yes, I don't buy the idea at all of a 'dilution' of local culture caused by immigration. Evidence shows that newcomers to a country are often quite keen to adapt to a country's customs and values rather than reject them. It's not as if the immigrant population are one monolithic mass with a single culture and this culture somehow threatens to overwhelm the local one - they themselves are a hugely diverse grouping in terms of language, ethnicity, religion and so on.

If you were born in Ireland, it's your duty to leave this a better state than when you were born here. It's fairly simple. Lots of people left Ireland over the years, some came back, some didn't - but it's those who stayed who should be honoured and respected for building the state to whatever it is.

The same applies to those seeking to enter here on spurious grounds of persecution, rather than genuine asylum. Send them back to do their duty by their own states.

Again, who says it's our duty? You just made this up.