Immigration and Ireland - MEGATHREAD *Read OP for mod warnings before posting*

Meanwhile, the government that got voted in democratically are risking causing huge protests from the 'vast majority' who won't be happy with these reforms.

•Three months deadline for processing applications.

•Use of hearings restricted.

•Deportations without requiring the permission of the minister.

The overall effect will be that asylum seekers whose applications are denied will find it much harder to contest the decision.

A real headscratcher that the recently elected government is going down this path, they are surely going to lose a huge amount of votes given that the 'vast majority' see no issues with immigration, right?

Good to see some actual concrete measures from O’Callaghan and some honesty from government.
They’ve abandoned the facile excuse that these are mostly people fleeing war and persecution - the cynical, false, and emotionally manipulative excuse still trotted out here by the defenders of the system up to now.

Free admission now that the vast majority (80%) of applicants are not genuine and are chancing their arms, using the Asylum system to circumvent our visa restrictions.

Glad to see it. This will take pressure off the already strained system and free up resources for those that are genuinely in need of our help.

Surely they'll re-evaluate previous asylum cases if they're questioning 80% of them? It's no joking matter.

Yeah it’s a shame it’s taken this long and billions in tax payer funds spent on mostly non genuine applicants for the last couple of years - but refreshing to see the government being honest with the populace now and taking responsibility that they had things wrong.

The reforms look to promise a much more reasonable and functional system.

Pickingrandomnumbersoutofmyhole.com

Sorry A ,got tired of the numbers game bickering.

I think you are having a laugh to suggest that everyone has been on the same page re the state of the asylum system all along.

There was an enormous thread with thousands of posts on it, dismissing lots of the criticism of the system as far right/racist/dogwhistling/whathaveyou discussion.

Many people on that (and this) thread were NOT accepting of the idea that most of the applicants were not genuine, and that this was largely a huge waste of taxpayer resources on chancers.

Fair enough if you’re in agreement with that now, refreshing for people to be able to change their minds about things.

“But we’ve ALWAYS been at War with East Asia” lol

Economist Dan O’Brien has coined an interesting phrase here “Demand Denialism” from certain quarters in Ireland, who deny the very basic common sense notion that adding hundreds of thousands of people to a population is going to cause a massive strain on an already strained housing situation.

It's crazy. You can still argue in favour of the current levels of immigration if you want, but claiming it has not led to higher accommodation costs really is just silly. You should be wary of anyone peddling that argument.

Yeah it’s great, brilliant to see reform coming at long last.

I also thank Minister O’Callaghan for showing a bit of backbone and acknowledging the truth that most of the entrants to the system were not genuine and that we can’t keep wasting billions of euro on it.
The disingenuous obfuscation from some parts in their attempts to disguise this reality has been fairly exhausting for the last three years.

It was more than 5k. Anyone saying it was 5k or less is just as delusional as people saying it was 50k. Probably closer to 10-12k.

Yeah absolutely, I think most of the denial was around that authenticity piece and the questions around willing destruction of passports etc.
I agree I don’t think people were ever really saying that migrants who were not actual refugees should be granted asylum - though I do think many were quite permissive and complacent about the glaring lack of rigour that was evident in our system.

Agree it’s a recent issue, stemming from about 2022 onwards - unfortunately we’ve seen other countries that went much further down a similar path. We had the awareness and warnings regarding this, so it was quite frustrating to see us make those same mistakes that were clear to see. Particularly when other countries like Denmark copped on much sooner and we could’ve done the same, but instead erroneously ploughed on with the misapprehension that we were somehow going to achieve a different outcome from every other country experiencing this.

Very frustrating and an opportunity cost of huge amounts of taxpayer funds that could have been spent on other things that would actually benefit the country.

Due to this governments immigration policy of allowing unvetted economic migrants into the country they have made housing prices unaffordable for people.

I don't think that's true, legal migration to fill our skills shortfall is crippling our housing sector

Demand Denialism is very prevalent in this thread.

I suppose you wouldn’t have a limit on any numbers coming. House the world is your policy. Unrealistic and dangerous mentality.