That was a comment I saw this morning, as I read about the new Direct Provision hotel in Moville, Donegal. Followed by the comment: "It would be a dereliction of our duty to humanity not to open our doors to those in need."
After reading the
article, the demographic of the people supporting the conversion of the hotel into a Direct Provision center seem to be the same type of people supporting the opening of our doors to the world's needy. Another supporter of this view (a college lecturer in the northwest) stated that "if people have to queue a bit longer at the doctor's surgery or make room in the classrooms for more children, it's a small price to pay compared to what the people seeking asylum have gone through."
She goes on to say" "Most people who are coming won't even be in this country yet. They will be walking across deserts or hitching rides in trucks as we speak."
The top 10 nationalities applying for "international protection" (must be the new phrase that we have to use for the asylum process) in Ireland are: Georgians, Albanians, Syrians, Zimbabweans, Pakistanis, Nigerians, South Africans, Congolese (from the Democratic Republic of Congo), Brazilians and Algerians. If I was a betting man, and taking the Syrians out of the equation for obvious reasons, the vast majority in our top 10 countries arrived by plane into our country, and bypassed other safe countries; no walking across deserts for the Albanians or Brazilians or Georgians (?; why Georgia).
I wonder if those supporters of our country's open doors are that naive? But since they are very vocal and their comments are broadly reported by the Irish media; I also wonder if the country's politicians believe that this is the majority view? It is certainly not the majority view in my heavily taxed and resource-starved community.
Outside of Dublin, we are not a rich country. We cannot afford non-genuine asylum claimants. Meanwhile,
in other news, Ireland's carer of the year has to fundraise to get what their very sick son needs. There are many, many other examples. Due to funding issues, off-hours mental health services are not available to our children and teenagers in many counties across Ireland. Maybe we are not as rich as some people think, and maybe we should be putting the resources allocated for the needy of Brazil, Nigeria and Albania, into Ireland's local services where there is an obvious need.