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

The reasons Arab countries won’t take them is not really relevant. What is relevant is that our sycophantic virtue signalling politicians would put us at the front of the queue to take them and this would be done with no planning.

Yeah but previous Israeli bouts of 'mowing the lawn' in Gaza have not seen mass exoduses of civilians AFAIK. I'm not aware of significant numbers of Palestinians moving out of the region as yet in response to thye current turmoil and it's going on a while now.

But us taking them in wouldn't be helping Israel?

And I don't see how this country could take in any more refugees, no matter the number. We are simply full, no room. If we have to take in another 10k or 20k, where are they going to live?

Michael Martin said we would take in circa 200k ukrainians…

Did you know, that of all the Ukrainian's that have moved here from other EU countries (Govt recently admitting it is 1 in 3) could have been legally told to return to the country they first received their temporary protection in, but weren't

What does our lot do - Hello, welcome. Come on in, where did you come from...Belgium?...ah that's grand, just sign here for your €220 + child benefits, + accommodation + med card +,+,+

The figures that have been reported over the last months of new arrivals have varied from between 600 and 800 per week. I'd say it's nearer the the 800 but I'll go with 700 as an avg

That means of the 700 p/m arriving, 233 p/w came from other EU countries (3rd country) and could have been refused temp protection in Ireland - 233 x €220 pw = €51,260 pw

I did an exercise extrapolating that out for just 8 weeks adding €525 pw (75 p/d) for accommodation. The exponential growth rate after 8 weeks was 700% and was at a cost of €6.25m that was unnecessarily spent - This could well have gone on for at least a year which would amount to a huge figure

It's a criminal waste of money by the Govt imo, as they simply did not have to take people from 3rd countries. They're talking about gender quotas in there - any chance they could try for IQ quotas instead, y'know try to get avg above 85

The secondary arrivals situ was discussed on the radio this morning - 11mins in

Well whatever the intention (which with nothing official to counter it, seems to be the dilution of concepts as nationality, sovereignty and independence in favour of an EU superstate where countries are reduced to provinces/counties where citizens have no say at all by design), the result has been to completely overwhelm already struggling and inadequate services while simultaneously discriminating against the natives and inviting anyone with a sad story or ambitions of better prosepects to come try their luck.

With news yesterday that the EU has signed off on commencing Ukranian accession talks, before long the 100,000 currently here will be made legitimate migrants and thus our responsibility for as long as they wish to remain - assuming McEntee doesn't give them all Irish citizenship in the meantime anyway which I wouldn't put past her based on previous performance.

Everyone laughed at the UK but they were right to be suspicious of the long-term outcome of the "project". The EU should never have mutated beyond the EEC trade body it started as. It's never been a grouping of equals, common interests, or shared identity (we saw that particularly during the Financial Crisis when the needs of Germany were put ahead of all others, particularly the 2nd-tier nations including ourselves) and this is the result - although it was obvious really when we were made vote again because we didn't give the "correct" answer to the Lisbon Treaty the first time.

This, plus the polarisation of debate on platforms like Twitter, and the one-sided commentary in most of our media has led us to a situation where those who warned about this were shouted down, marginalised or belittled but here we are in 2023 - a country struggling to provide even basic services to its native citizens and legitimate migrants, with growing discontent and social unrest becoming the norm (dismissed as "far right" in a country that even a cursory look back at our history of the last 2 decades would show is a laughable accusation), and a future where we will face ghettoisation and cultural discord/clashes, reduced supports for even higher taxation than we pay now, and the inevitable and far more serious problems we've seen in the UK, France and elsewhere in Europe.

But then, we've never really done long-term thinking in this country. Whenever we've been "threatened" with making our own decisions we've handed away that responsibility ASAP - first to the Church, then to the EU. To be fair, we're only at this "self-governance" 100 years anyway so it's not surprising that we are still obsessed with nonsense like GAA/county rivalry (which is played upon by the politician to divide and conquer repeatedly), or parochial/immediate self-interest. Far too many can't see beyond their own front gate or immediate family and those who can are denigrated by a begrudgery that is still thriving.

No wonder then we're ripe for being taken advantage of. It's cause and effect really and we've passed the point of no return I fear.

There will be so many Independents elected to the next Dail they will form quite a powerful bloc so effectively will be a party in all but name.

Well I probably couldn't do much worse than this guy..

If only he and they were as concerned about Irish homeless and native citizens as well who are struggling to keep or find somewhere eh? We're only the people whose interests they are actually obligated to support after all.

But then never forget that this is the same man who was crowing about adding an extra million people to the population by 2040 a few years back, and a friend an admirer of the late Peter Sutherland who was all about globalisation and the EU project.

When you look at the comments from Varadkar, Coveney, Martin and even Phil Hogan at the end of that article, it's no wonder that FG have led us down this path in the last decade. This is all part of the (2040) plan of more people, more integration with Europe - it's summed up nicely by this line in the article actually :

Hmm.. I don't know. That seems almost prophetic to me given where we are now and the (FG-led) Government's track record over the last decade. All part of the (2040) Plan as I said above.

Not much in that plan for the rest of us though.

But even if a group of them form a pact to support a FF/FG government and don't actually become ministers or anything, that will give them leverage over specific policies if they choose to exercise it