Immigration and Ireland - MEGATHREAD *Mod Note Added 02/09/25*

TonyMaloney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123984900#Comment_123984900

Any chance you can stop asking questions about that poor girl that nobody here could possibly answer?

As for the principles that govern charitable things such as who receives help getting out of homelessness, I'd like them to continue being based on things like greatest need and vulnerability, as opposed to stupid nationalistic principles.

You'd have Brian (40) from coolock who is on the streets due to addiction helped ahead of her, and I think that would be absolutely disgusting.

Each to their own

PokeHerKing

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123984970#Comment_123984970

Trying to solve the worlds problems when we cant solve our own is a bit like a fat person giving diet advice.

DebDynamite

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123984833#Comment_123984833

“I live alone. After my experience living in hostels, it was my number one criteria that I am not sharing ever again,” she said.

Isn’t it well for her. When I was her age I was living in house shares and certainly didn’t have the luxury of being able to live alone.

TonyMaloney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985006#Comment_123985006

This scheme is about getting young homeless people off our streets and trying to help them find a sustainable path in life. It's not about solving the world's problems, it's solving our problems. You lot can prioritise all Irish people over children all you like, but thankfully the people running these schemes are not as callous as you.

Patrick2010

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123984970#Comment_123984970

on that basis half of Africa could make a good case for being housed here, its no wonder so many make the long trip.

TonyMaloney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985018#Comment_123985018

Luxury?
Were you living homeless for years as a teen, or are you making a ridiculous comparison?

PokeHerKing

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985022#Comment_123985022

And you can screech as much as helen lovejoy about the children but it doesn't change the simple truth that this country has its own issues that it has never been able to solve.

So it stands less than zero chance of solving additional problems.

So ill ask you again, what is half of nothing?

DebDynamite

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985030#Comment_123985030

She’s an adult working full time, like I was. How she spent her teenage years is irrelevant. I’d like to know her reasons for not being able to look after her own housing in a house share, when she’d probably even be entitled to HAP.

TonyMaloney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985040#Comment_123985040

a young person living homeless on our streets is our problem. and in this small instance, hopefully we're helping her solve her problems.

I'm not going to answer your stupid question. I can only assure you it's not the gotcha that you seem to think it is

PokeHerKing

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985083#Comment_123985083

I dont think anythings a gotchya moment.

Im genuinely interested in how you divide nothing between more peole?

Thats what you're advocating so I think you should try answer the question?

TonyMaloney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985044#Comment_123985044

She's been living on the streets and in hostels since she was 14. She likely didn't get to finish school.

“I have felt the most unsafe in hostels. I’ve been robbed, my jewellery taken off my body while I was asleep. I’ve been drugged, assaulted, degraded, belittled and bullied in every possible way,” she said. “I would not repeat that experience if I were paid an arm and a leg, and a kidney, for it – never again. “I’ve spent six months inside the tents outside the Criminal Courts of Justice, and I ended up getting pneumonia over and over again."

Are you really equating your own story with hers, Debbie? Were you in similar circumstances and deserving of the same help, or is it just simply the case that you often deny the suffering of others - especially if they're foreign?

TonyMaloney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985106#Comment_123985106

Well it's not nothing. It's a pilot scheme to help young people get off the streets with 20 places. That leaves 19.

DebDynamite

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985112#Comment_123985112

She’s working full time. She’s clearly not that helpless or vulnerable that she can’t manage to hold down a job. There should be no reason anyone working full time – even a minimum wage job – shouldn’t be able to secure their own shared accommodation, especially with the help of HAP. Better to be sharing a house than living in a tent on the street.

TonyMaloney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985216#Comment_123985216

Debbie, you seem to be fixated on her doing the one thing she absolutely doesn't want to do because of trauma.
I've absolutely no idea why you'd deny her targeted help, but give her a load of HAP money and insist she put her trauma behind her and find a bunch of strangers to move in with in the worst rental market we've ever seen, with no landlord references or rental history.

She just ends up homeless again with your plan. Not that you'd care about that. After all she's foreign born.

PokeHerKing

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985158#Comment_123985158

No my original question was to your point about the lack of social housing built over the past decade while advocating for AS housing.

So how can you service more people when already on a deficit that you yourself brought up?

Ozymandius2011

Poland is an EU country and Polish emigration has fallen dramatically since the 2008 crash. If she arrived here with her parents at the age of 14, then the obvious question is where are the parents? The State seems unwilling to ask such questions, including in cases where the person is an Irish citizen. Parents have legal responsibilities to children before they are adults.

TonyMaloney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985257#Comment_123985257

You can't. But you don't sacrifice the principles that lead to ideas like social-housing coming into existence in the first place, just because of a shortage of stock.

If we had zero people here seeking homes after being granted asylum, we'd have a housing crisis of almost exactly the same size.

PokeHerKing

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985331#Comment_123985331

Thats a real 'if my aunty had balls shed be my uncle' kind of argument though.

Ultimately your pov is we cant service our own, we cant service new arrivals but like lets just keep trying because it feels good?

dmakc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985331#Comment_123985331

Do you think the thousands in hotels will just live out their days there? Let's imagine we miraculously catch up and house all asylum seekers here now, do you think the rest will stop coming in, or will the hotels replace the current lot with another phase of asylum seekers? The denominator will not stop. This is a well oiled trafficking system and they're queueing up on the borders.

Britain has an ideological system of one in, one out. Ireland's reality is one housed, another in. To say they don't / won't contribute to our housing crisis is mental.

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123984658#Comment_123984658

The problem is that we grant failed AS leave-to-remain, instead of removing them.

There are 100,000+ failed AS living here with leave-to-remain.

If your claim fails, you should not be awarded leave-to-remain.

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123984777#Comment_123984777

Correct, even with zero AS, there would still be a (smaller) housing crisis.

But why add to the scale of the housing crisis, by giving leave-to-remain and houses to failed AS?

Quags

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985392#Comment_123985392

Because it makes the do-gooders feel better about themselves whereas us in the real world would rather we take measures to help reduce intake, speed up those who are failed AS, lower the current homelessness affecting Irish (including couch surfing etc) plus more things to improve Ireland

TonyMaloney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985382#Comment_123985382

I'm not for a minute suggesting we try to put every asylum seeker in social housing.

For the ones that have their application accepted though, yeah they're our responsibility and are entitled to apply for housing. And if there are factors like children involved, then they should be prioritized over say an individual Irishman who's struggling in the rental market (which is a nightmare).

It's a shitshow. But it's not going to improve by applying nationalistic concepts to it.

Ozymandius2011

Edit it's Athlone not Roscommon.

A few days ago a court blocked a planned IPAS centre in Athlone that was to house 1,000 asylum seekers.

https://www.westmeathindependent.ie/2025/11/08/councillors-hail-court-ruling-in-ipas-case-as-a-victory-for-the-people-of-athlone/

How on earth would you maintain order in a building with 1,000 people, many of whom you're not sure what their ID is? Most are destroying their travel documents. Athlone does not have the population of Dublin and the Garda presence.

Feminists have told us for many years about "toxic masculinity", but appear that assume it only exists in the developed world. But when women are concerned about men moving into an IPAS centre, suddenly the men are saints? Surely there needs to be vetting.

One of the lessons of the MeToo movement is that victims of sexual assault, should be believed, and we should not be distracted from the search for justice.

I saw a Sky report on the Citywest protests, and they spoke to a section of them largely ignored by the Irish media, some of whom were old women with candles presumably holding vigils for the 10 year old girl. There are peaceful protesters too, but our media isn't interested in them because it wants to stereotype them as deplorables.

Why would someone destroy their travel documents, and are we rewarding this, despite it being illegal? Obviously frustrating deportation is one reason, but a second reason would be that some have committed crimes and are fugitives from the criminal justice system in other countries.

Two thirds of asylum claimants claimed asylum in a previous country. I think the more generous the system becomes the greater the pull factors. I think many on the Left see asylum as a form of redistribution of wealth, rather than just about saving people from danger. Most of these countries of origin, while poor, are not at war. And while many are not democracies, democracy has historically been rare in Africa after independence. That in my opinion is not sufficient to justify asylum, given the population explosion on Africa, and some countries making more progress there eg Botswana, than others.

When Irish people seek rental accommodation, they are often asked to provide landlords and employers references, and Garda background checks. Asylum has become a way of getting around this.

Its not beyond the realm of possibility that Irish criminals will start pretending to be asylum seekers in order to get around background checks.

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985414#Comment_123985414

The problem is that even though we reject most applications, we let them stay here.

Bonkers.

PokeHerKing

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985414#Comment_123985414

What is a nationalistic concept?

Is it similar to how they tell you to put your own mask on first before helping others in the event of cabin decompression on a plane?

_Kaiser_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985414#Comment_123985414

We have our own problems and our own needs that we are failing to support and deliver on.

I don't see the Governments of all these countries sending us a cheque to pay for housing/supporting their citizens.

The "think of the children" argument is a slippery slope that leads back to anchor babies. Once we sort out our own issues, and the needs of our own people, THEN we can start thinking about how we can help others!

By the way… this doesn't necessarily/always have to mean bringing/settling them here either. Let's not forget that Ireland contributes a lot of money (2bn annually) in foreign aid (last line here):

https://www.ireland.ie/en/irish-aid/news-and-publications/latest-news/news-archive/ireland-boosts-foreign-aid-budget-by-60-million/

Stephen_Maturin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985414#Comment_123985414

So an Irish person down on their luck that has otherwise contributed to the country all their life should be passed over in favour of randomers with absolutely no connection to the country.

That’s crazy and unjust.

At a personal level you wouldn’t turn away your own in their time of need because there’s some stranger worse off somewhere else. Why should the same not apply at a national level. You’re saying the state has a greater responsibility to look after these randomers than their own citizens.
What is even the point of a nation state if not the advancement of the wellbeing of the people of the nation?

I’m Alright Jack types prefer getting themselves more purity points favouring asylum seekers over destitute pale and stale Irish people I suppose

TonyMaloney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985496#Comment_123985496

Well I'm not suggesting we put failed asylum seekers on the housing list.

I have sympathy with economic migrants. I'd probably do similar in their shoes. But we're not in a position to cater to them, and we should make every effort to get them to return to their country of origin. That can be tricky of course though.

TonyMaloney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123985532#Comment_123985532

I'm not alright, Stephen. I'm struggling too.

I take it you're not a proponent of women and children first, then?
We're not family. We're strangers who share a country and a history. It doesn't count for nothing, but if I come across a fully grown Irish man and a child of unknown origin struggling to stay afloat in a body of water, I'm going to help the child first.

And you seem to not understand that if we accept asylum seekers into the state they should enjoy the same duty of care as everyone else. You don't get higher priority over a bunch of kids just because you were here first.