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

Why pick the whole population of the county of Monaghan?

Lets drill a bit further…

4,077 adults in the town. 800 of them turn out, which is ~20% of the voting public in the town. Thats one you cannot ignore. Politicians need to get their act together.

If I quoted here now the immigrants who were rapists and murderers who came to ireland and committed crimes in ireland, would that mean that all immigrants were rapists and murderers?

Apply your "kind" "progressive" logic across the board and do some critical thinking, does it all make sense to you?

To be fair, not everyone who attends an anti-immigration protest is a far-right thug or a racist. Some of them are just thick. Easily led and seeking easy answers as to why their own lives are shit.

I won't be lectured by anyone who thinks "if I want your opinion, I'll give it to you". Anyone with half a functioning brain cell can see that McGregor is a horrible person in general. But, because he holds an opinion on something, doesn't make him wrong on that opinion because he's a horrible person, in general. People are more and more listening to the message and less and less concerned with who the messenger is. Quite a conundrum for the classists to grapple with.

Must be great to live in an ivory tower where the non-EU national maid comes in every morning at 9am to spray Mr Sheen around the gaff and whip up some poached eggs for breakfast.

But you are picking something. You are moving the goalposts. You said the whole of County Monaghan should be used as the baseline to measure the protest numbers against. Your were very happy to use national numbers against the Dublin protest last weekend, no issues there - it was advertised as a national protest.

However, the Carrickmacross protest - which almost nobody outside of the town knew was planned, and only heard about it after the protest happened. In this local protest approx. 20% of the voting public in the town (or 13.5% of the entire population) made it their business to protest.

You said previously that 3.5% of the whole population are needed to make it an issue of note. One that politicians should really be taking account of as it represents a decent representation of people against a policy.

With all that in mind, I think it is very fair and generous to say that the people of Carrickmacross have sent a resounding message that they are most unhappy with the plans for the town. After all, I am keeping well within the guardrails of your original assertation. The 3.5% required has been exceeded by multiples of factors in Carrickmacross. Fair play to them.

I wish people would protest against government incompetence and bailing out the wealthy, rather than punching downwards and blaming immigrants for society's ills. Politicians, bankers and developers must be delighted every time they see a racist protest. It takes the spotlight off themselves.

That is a disgraceful comment which I hope you are big enough to delete.

‘Bit of a prick’??

Dan O’Brien was one of the best commentators on the financial crash, who advocated solutions that were effective. He certainly didn’t favour pain for the sake of it. Disliking him because he said 250,000 people came to Ireland in one year is wildly unfair.

I would have expected a bit better from you.

Well like it or not we need bankers and developers.

We also need well educated skilled immigrants who come here legally through the visa system to fill job vacancies in the health sector etc.

What we don't need is people with little or no education and maybe just a few words of English showing up with no documents who will be nothing but a drain on resources from the moment they arrive at Dublin Airport.

Housing needs to be sorted, nobody is disputing this.

Although for three parties who are always banging on about housing we often find it's TDs and councillors from SF, Labour and PBP that put in the most objections to planning applications especially in Dublin.

In what way is your response related to what I said?
The meetings were addressed by rapists and racists. You are the only one concluding that everyone attending these meetings is a rapist or racist. Perhaps you should examine your own thinking.

Jesus Christ!! Step out of your Ivory Tower and start living in the real world for yourself.

Mod - warned for uncivil post

Once you sign up to these things are you signing up forever or are they mechanisms for retreating from such commitments?

Not to mention that the interpretation of said commitments changed dictated by others, a lot of eastern European countries finding that out over the last few years. They signed up for the European Convention on Human Rights in the 90s, a convention which was mostly written in the 50s and in neither of those decades did those signing or writing it take it to mean whatever left wing nonsense that the ECHR keeps interpretation it as.

Ireland won't do anything until the very end but hopefully at least for this, the UK does eventually leave it and then another few follow. Just need a one to start and a lot more will follow, same as with the border walls and offshoring.

The fact that the current economic system requires bankers and developers doesn't mean that people shouldn't be angry with them for the damage they've done to the country. Far more damage than immigrants, but it takes more effort and thought to punch upwards.

Having worked and studied with many people who arrived here as refugees, I'd dispute the notion that they're a drain on resources. Maybe Leg End Reject will come along and warn you about making generalisations. Or maybe it's ok, if the targets are only refugees.

I think housing is the only valid reason to object to refugees being allowed into the country. But when I saw people in Dublin last week waving tatty tricolours and shouting "Get them out", I'm not sure that housing was their focus. Pure hatred.

Mod - warned for breach of forum charter

An opinion poll today had housing as the top concern of voters, followed by immigration. Obviously the two are closely linked.

Tbh Ireland would be an outlier of immigration wasn’t an issue. Our wonderful leaders spent a few years pretending there was no issue at all, but they know that’s not on now and have been pivoting a little. Expect much more of it now.

It’s such a shame that the issue got made a left-right issue. No sensible person thinks that no immigration is possible or desirable. The debate really needs to be calm and focus on what is a proper limit and how to reach that. No sensible person thinks that having a few thousand new immigrants every week of the year is a good idea.