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

Government policy around immigration? Hang on, nearly everyone on this thread has tried to claim that they don't have a problem with immigration, but just asylum seekers. Infairness, most people were stupid to actually believe that but good to see yous are finally admitting you want immigrants out as well.

Some effort to completely ignore what was actually said just to go on a solo run. Also, who is "yous"?

Who would have thought being a great humanitarian would be so financially rewarding?

I'm sure they'd open their hearts and hotels even if there was no money in it.

A scandalous 6 million a day is being spent on this racket.

https://gript.ie/d-hotel-in-drogheda-paid-e5-4-million-for-first-3-months-as-asylum-accommodation-provider/

I see the protesters turned up in their dozens today.

A few of the patriots have bags of cans. Don't have to be up for work early by the looks of things.

Great to see a well attended and peaceful protest by the those against the governments current polices. Of course as usual, RTE can't count, and the media in general give the attention to the much smaller counter demonstration, but heyho, its great to see so many out there. Despite what the media and left ngo's tell us, there is a significant percentage of the country who agree the government have it wrong.

Is this thread broken? I can't see any posts.

It will never stop. We will be made gone soon enough. No one is coming to help. Prepare accordingly.

On average 500 a week arriving, the majority claiming fake asylum. Sure what could go wrong!

Very upsetting viewing, tonight's RTÉ Investigates: Inside the Protests. Some thoughts, opinions and questions:

1. What are Ireland's international obligations regarding taking in international protection applicants? It's clear that the State can't physically accommodate them, so they're doing both asylum seekers and actual residents here an injustice. Dozens of asylum seekers in tents on a Dublin side street is a situation no-one wants or needs.
2. An Garda Síochána comes across as a completely impotent police force. That's at least down to the government, which provides us the people with a police force, and maybe also includes policing decisions by higher-ups in the force. Looking at the RTÉ guy being harassed and assaulted by yer man with no intervention by the police in the line and even less from the two who strolled past. I wonder why no action was taken. Were the gardaí hopelessly outnumbered and on a hiding to nothing and that knew it? Or did someone somewhere decide that the guards would just protect that area and not get involved in anything? Or was it down to fear in individual guards? Also, where were they that morning in Coolock after they removed the blockade? They scarpered shortly after that, left the staff and security of Remcoll Capital to fend for themselves despite the inevitability of the return of a huge number of belligerent protesters, and didn't come back until hours later until it was way too late. It's hard to imagine a potential situation more needing of a police presence, and yet they were nowhere to be seen for so long. And "policing by consent", just what is that? "Yes, guard, I give you permission to arrest me for throwing this petrol bomb." The phrase makes no sense.
3. The government has a lot to answer for. There has been consistently a lack of information and consultation with local communities regarding the introduction of asylum seekers to those communities. This information void allows some very nasty people to fill that void with exaggerated speculation and downright lies in an attempt to whip up fear and hatred in communities. And it's working. And it needs to be stopped. Go back to Dublin in the 1990s for example. If you're not from there and you visited the city during that decade, you'll surely have seen a lot of non-natives. (You'd notice this more clearly than someone who's from there, seeing as rural Ireland was a lot less cosmopolitan back then.) This is a normal phenomenon in every capital city in the world. Dublin is still home to many non-natives in 2024, but racism is way up. Ask yourself why. But the government aren't doing anything to help the situation. Correction, the situations: an immigration crisis with nowhere to put them and no way to account for them, failure to protect the immigrants we do have, failure to engage with communities, and the rise and rise of racism. They're bystanders. They're like a bridegroom who watches while his bride gets too friendly with a guest at their wedding reception and does nothing about it, expecting it all to sort itself out even as they start getting touchy-feely. Well it won't. And the government need to tighten their controls and not let undocumented ghosts into the country. But they won't. It was the same with Covid when the numbers weren't so bad but then they did nothing to stop tourists and businesspeople entering willy-nilly and the numbers absolutely exploded.
4. We saw a lot of crimes being committed on tonight's programme. Assault, arson, harassment, "n****r", etc. What repercussions will there be for all these people? Will there be any, even if they can be identified from tonight's footage?
5. Going back to the gardaí's failure to do their job in Coolock that day: given the negligent absence of police, could the staff/security under attack have legally taken the law into their own hands and fought back and/or detained their attackers? That first guy who entered the site after the barriers came down seemed to have the run of the place, could security have grabbed him as a trespasser and locked him in a room somewhere or tied him to a pole?
6. We saw attacks on police cars. Surely there should be enhanced sentences for people who would go out of their way to give two fingers to the State by attacking a squad car. Same for intimidation of gardaí.

There was only one winner in that prime programme, The Government. At no point did it question the reason behind the protests, no point did it show the slow and peaceful build ups. At no point did it actually try to show that there is a peaceful majority agaisnt these centres. There was no acknowledgement of how and why tensions rise, why did get to the stage the people are angry.

Regarding Newtown, it failed to tell the story how a resolution meeting had been called between the gardai, developer and protesters with the understanding no work would take place only for them to go back on their word and sneak in with a convoy of trucks and equipment at 2am.

Yes it showed the ugliest and worst of some, a minority of people who use hate and abuse but that doesn't mean everyone who protests or is agaisnt the governments policies is a thug shouting abuse.

As I said in the opening sentence, only one winner from that programme.

Short version : Vanilla (the platform provider for this site) are bargain basement, coupled with the fact that there's only 1 (I believe part time) member of staff in Boards.ie outside of the CEO, and he can't do much beyond logging the tickets with Vanilla support and hope they fix them at some point. Not his fault.. That's just the way the site runs nowadays.

Anyway, back on topic.......

I only saw bits of the protest reports yesterday as I'm away for a work thing, but it doesn't surprise me that the focus is on the scumbag element who would cause trouble regardless.

This however doesn't take away from or wave away the genuine concerns of the majority of the electorate (as evidenced through polls over the last year), nor does it excuse the deliberate and determined efforts from Government to continue with this enforced resettlement programme - enforced because anyone who stands up in the communities affected can expect a visit from the public order unit and to be called 'far right racists/xenophobes' by the same media begging for their money because 'quality journalism matters'.

It's no different to when the Gardai were used to enforce the installation of water meters 7 years ago. It's the FG way to trample over the wishes of the electorate to support the hangers on making coin from it all. It astonishes me that they are surging in the polls. Sure, SF are awful yes but re-electing the same crowd who are responsible for this debacle??!!! Vote Independent at least.

Make no mistake, under current policy the numbers we're seeing reported will only keep rising. Thousands and thousands of mostly welfare tourists arriving here with their hand out and which we, the native citizens and taxpayers are told instantly become our responsibility and the majority of whom will remain a drain indefinitely, ultimately to be rewarded with citizenship and a puff piece on the RTE News.

That though isn't the biggest issue believe it or not. No, the bigger concern is the effects this will all have on our society in the long term. We've already seen gangs calling each other out and attacking others in videos on social media, but the real problems will start when communities become overwhelmed by the numbers (it's already happening on a smaller scale in villages and towns where they've been dumped into hotels and other buildings). Already insufficient infrastructure and services stretched beyond breaking, understandable resentment from the locals, and an "us vs them" mindset from both groups as a result with the division and conflict that inevitably brings.

Then there's the effects it'll have on future investment and priorities in those communities, something that will become exacerbated as some of the new arrivals (fresh with their Irish citizenship) start lobbying and campaigning for still more supports for their (separate but growing) community. Again this is something that already happens with some of the better known personalities appearing regularly to talk down to the Irish on the RTE News. Wait till they start standing for local or national Government though.....

This isn't scaremongering. These are the inevitable things that will - and already are - occur(ring). In a decade or so we'll find ourselves in the same place as parts of the UK, France and other countries where this has already happened and resulted in disaster for anyone not directly benefiting from it.

This is why there's growing pushback in those places that is now reflecting in domestic and national policy changes in those countries - but as usual, here in Ireland we're the slow learners who have to not only repeat their mistakes, but give them enough of an "Irish twist" to make the issues significantly worse! This will rapidly come to a head when the next economic crash hits (these things are circular given our economy) and the Magic Money Tree (remember when FG and FF rightly derided SF for that concept?) starts to wither and die. Again all of this has happened before too.

Ireland is changing, likely permanently and it won't be for the better. We're going down a dark path of social division and separate communities, of resentment and frustration boiling over into stupid acts of violence (as is understandable but self defeating), and an increasingly marginalised native population who will find themselves less and less represented (not that it's exactly stellar now) in local and later national politics.

Our only hope seems to be that the policy changes gathering steam elsewhere will reduce or stop the amount arriving into the EU bloc going forward, but that won't do anything to address the problems we're already facing, or what we do with thousands upon thousands of mostly chancers already here.

That's a problem our children will have to deal with, and they won't be thanking us for it!

As my dad used to say, 'go looking for trouble son and it'll always find you.'

Meanwhile, good to see the reality of the situation reported here.