General Irish politics discussion thread

We're literally projected to hit 20k asylum seekers this year, according to our government. We've had close to 15k the last number of years.

Accomodating asylum seekers is costing the state billions of euros a year (the projection is €3bn for last year, significantly more than was spent on public transportation for the country).

And the numbers of both asylum seekers, and the cost, are only going to go up every year as the climate crisis worsens.

Sooner or later we have to control who enters the country - and Denmark shows us its completely possible to do so.

20k a year (and increasing) of asylum seekers arriving require circa 7500 new housing units to house them, or almost 20% of the total houses being build in the state this year. Having 18k fewer people entering the state this year (if we managed a Denmark style reduction of 90%) would make a massive difference to our housing crisis.

This isn't touching on Ukrainians at all, who're a completely separate issue.

The promise I remember was to take in 100k refugees which is an order of magnitude above the 13k in emergency accommodation, and by a government whose policies deliberately fuelled the housing crisis. Making what at best is a tone-deaf unkeepable promise was begging for trouble.

Tens of thousands of people are turning up at our border every year, approx 60% last year with no passport or official documents, and they're entering our country. Anyone who shows up at the border with no passport is allowed to claim asylum and stay. Thats not controlling who enters the country.

The decisions, and how long it takes to make them, are quite irrelevant. Only 248 failed asylum seekers were deported from the state in 2022, 285 from Jan-end of Nov 2023. Thats a tiny % of the total, the vast vast majority of people who arrive here illegally are being allowed to stay.

Asylum seekers don't stay in direct provision for decades, they sooner or later end up in the normal housing market, taking up housing. The idea that 20,000 people arriving a year won't put any additional pressure on the housing market is just completely at odds with any grasp of reality. Thats the equivalent of a new Sligo town sized town needing to built every year, just to house these people.

And, again, theres the fact that all of this is costing the state literally billions of euros a year. And that 80% of Irish people say they want numbers reduced. Both extremely relevant facts, you'd think.

Denmark's number of asylum seekers was increasing by 20-40% a year, every year, for multiple years on end in the early 2010s. A situation similar to the one Ireland is in right now. They then introduced measures to restrict this, and their numbers dropped by 90%. We could do exactly what they did tomorrow, if our government wanted to. Theres literally nothing stopping us.

The Council of Europe makes plenty of reports every year that are roundly ignored.

What exact real world, concrete, impact has this statement had on Denmark? None. And in the meantime their measures have actually had a concrete, real world, impact on their arrival numbers.

We're forecast to have 20k asylum seekers arrive this year. The final figure for 2023 is expected to be around 18k. 14k arrived in 2022. Thats quite literally tens of thousands.

We have a deportation rate of approx 1%. 99% of those who claim asylum are let stay. Almost none "voluntarily leave". As anyone with any grasp of the real world would tell you, do you think large numbers of people are voluntarily returning to Nigeria or Pakistan after paying smugglers a fortune to get here and after spending years in Ireland?

The average length of time in direct provision as of 2024 is 2 years, not "up to a decade". Most of the 14,000 asylum seekers from 2022 (and all those who came before them) are already in our normal housing market, adding significantly the pressure on it.

Theres no hyperbole or misrepresentation in my posts, I quote only verifiable statistics and facts. Our politicians currently love talking about these "legal obligations" like yourself, but in the real world Denmark has shown they mean nothing. These 'obligations' can be completely ignored, and as a result we could reduce the number of asylum seekers taken in by up to 90%. This is a proven succesful, completely possible, real world policy choice.

This would both save billions of euros a year of tax payer money, and reduce the demand for houses in Ireland by anything up to 8,000 units a year. Both of which would improve the quality of life for Irish people (and tax payers) significantly.

20k is "tens of thousands" by any literal definition.

99% of people who arrive illegally in Ireland are not deported. They, by definition, are "let stay". The figures dont lie.

If the average time in direct provision is now 24 months, then the 14k asylum seekers from 2022 are entering the normal housing market now. Again, the figures don't lie.

We're going to take in 20,000 asylum seekers this year, who will require 8,000 odd housing units to house them. And massive amounts of tax payer euros. The idea that taking in this vast quantity of people, and growing, every year, has no impact on our housing crisis is absolutely delusional stuff. Humans need places to live, more humans = more housing demand. Its very simple.

Is that done on a constituency analysis basis or based simply on the national vote?

The website sets out the methodology.

Well, it works less and less reliably.

But it may still have values, if the errors don't have a bias built in. Wrongly predicting that this Independent will be elected in Constituency A has a good change of being offset by mistakenly projecting that that independent will lose his seat in Constituency B. It will be interesting, after an election, to see how may individual predictions the site got wrong, versus how far off the overall projections per party are. If the overall projection is good enough the methodology is still useful, even if it produced less reliable constituency-level projections.

A strange body.

Wasn't there an attempt at portraying a previous decision by SIPO as being unanimous, when it turned out that the two genuinely independent members were in complete disagreement with that decision?

I wonder if this decision was similar? If there was a vote on it, I would like to see the results of that vote, and I would feel that all those who voted against transparency should be obliged to resign, as they are clearly compromised now.

I don't see anything strange in what happened at all.

Though it is very difficult to understand the full details of what happened because of the poor writing skills (or possibly deliberate obfuscation) of the Ditch journalist, the sequence of events seems to be as follows:

1. Ditch gets word of some issue with Varadkar's returns (probably illegally)
2. Ditch writes to SIPO seeking these returns
3. SIPO writes back to the Ditch and says that it can't give them the returns until they have been laid before the Oireachtas
4. Ditch starts judicial review
5. SIPO lays the final document before the Oireachtas (there is no procedure for laying any drafts or uncorrected documents before the Oireachtas)
6. Having laid the final document before the Oireachtas, SIPO releases to the Ditch the documents plus the two drafts/uncorrected documents (depending on your point of view)
7. The legal action falls before any court hearing as a result of the documents having been laid before the Oireachtas and then released
8. The Ditch writes up an incomprehensible article obfuscating what happened is some attempt to justify its vendetta.

All as simple as that, no conspiracy, just silly journalism.

don't think 6/7 happened as you suggest, SIPO publish the docs in December. They gave theditch the uncorrected docs in January.

seems theditch pursued the court action on principal or to create a precedent that they can requests and receive the docs before they are laid before the Oireachtas in future....

the issue was the decision to refuse to give the docs to someone before they are laid before the oireachtas which presumable they stood over until they didn't.