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

They did have their voices heard.

Then the government went ahead and did it anyway.

Trying to forcefully stop that isn't ok. There's been too much of that allowed. The softly, softly approach was way off from the start and it's only emboldened an element that thinks it's ok to burn buildings while complaining about homelessness.

I agree we need to build more houses though, but that's been an issue long before this recent influx of refugees.

#buildHomesNotHate

And it will only take a couple of the arsonists being caught and given hefty prison sentences to stop that happening.

I'm disappointed they weren't caught already.

But not surprised. The policing effort until recently was non-existent on these protests.

How was there not a garda watching that hotel in Galway? It was as obvious as my nose it was going to be burned.

Awful scenes in Roscrea. Very disturbing for kids arriving to a new home.

The optics of a huge number of Gardai clearing a path are terrible. I have no idea where we go from here as a country. The support for accommodating the amount of immigrants we already have just isn't there, but there's no plan for a change. So it's likely things will get worse.

The Government are at sea, they blame misinformation for the problems but then the Taoiseach writes to a national newspaper to spread his own misinformation on the issue. Could he have done a better job of inflaming the situation?

It will be lost in the debate, but Roscrea does kind of highlight capacity issues. A number of years ago a genius FF government closed down A&E services in Nenagh, in Ennis and in St John's in Limerick City. As a result there is only one A&E in the region, at UHL and it is a total disaster. Almost everyone in Clare, Limerick and North Tipp knows people who have spent days on trolleys. Aoife Johnston died while waiting there.

Clearly the region has needed major investment in health care, even before the large scale immigration of the last couple of years.

We are going into a dark, dark place if the Government doesn't get a grip. And it almost certainly won't.

Shocking fraudulent carry on.

I'd say the good people who keep voting Lowry in must be outraged!

Arson is a criminal offence and poses great risk.

If there's that likelihood of it occurring, I'd expect AGS to intervene proactively, whether it be public or private property.

Yet.

How was there not a garda watching that hotel in Galway? It was as obvious as my nose it was going to be burned.

When communities voice their fears about immigrants being planted on them one issue is that there are no Guards in the town to protect them. All they get is a phone link to a station in a neighbouring town and the visit of a patrol car for a couple of hours a day.

Roscrea for example.

So how are Guards supposed to provide 24 hour surveillance for all these new centres.

Well they had 14 people found in a container who should have been on the first plane back to their origin and somehow managed to "lose" 8 of them. I wouldn't put much faith in them catching a few firebugs to be very honest.

I don't think that was in the protestors minds at all.

But the state of health in the Mid West is appalling, it's widely known to be so, and the last thing the region needs is a significant increase in population when it can't cater for what lives here already. If our political class were working for us, they'd be trying to prevent that. Or at least they would have a very robust plan for the region and the thousands of new arrivals to it, particularly in Co Clare.

But they do regularly protest about services,

But as long as you can call it racism it explains everything away

The population was increasing significantly long before the big influx of asylum seekers in the past few years.

AFAIK asylum seekers make up a relatively small proportion of immigrant in the last decade.

Mostly pharma and IT workers coming in on visas. I've no problem with us being an open economy like that. But to do so you have to ensure infrastructure and services are increased in line with population increases.

I think it was a huge mistake not to put in a ratio system for visas over the past decade and issue visas for IT and pharma only when x amount of construction workers, nurses, doctors etc are available through local training or overseas recruitment.

People shouldn't take the law into their own hands, there's no excuse for blocking roads, shouting abuse or arson. It's unacceptable.

That said, immigration (not just asylum seekers, legal immigration even moreso) is out of control. The country can't take what's here already. Allowing such large scale immigration to continue is going to exacerbate the housing crisis, and it's going to put even greater pressure on A&E units that are already struggling. The really frustrating thing is that the Government know all this, but pretend it's not a problem at all or it's just inevitable and they shouldn't even be expected to try and stop it.

Taking the law into one's own hands is clearly wrong, but it's not too much to expect the Government to be at least trying to limit immigration, when they know that's in the best interests of Ireland.

A lot of people were laughing at the Brits a few years ago when they were upset about immigration.

Largely true, legal immigration is far more problematic than people want to admit. How can a country as small as this have a stable housing market and a strong economy at the same time, when it is so easy to come here from many other larger countries? It won't happen. It'd be nice if it could, but there's no chance of it. And our politicians need to start facing that.