Immigration and Ireland - MEGATHREAD *Mod Note Added 14/08/25*

From a self proclaimed former Marxist to sacrificing a generation of Irish youth at the alter of “The Economy” - quite the arc, what home ownership will do to a man!

Controlling only supply has been shown to be wholly ineffective, in fact our surfeit of houses is actually growing, we’re actively going backwards - things are getting worse under this approach.

It’s not enough to just say “Well that’s because they’re not doing it right”, because this is the government we are stuck with, they are not going to suddenly start pumping out the 100,000 gaffs a year that we need to normalise things.
It hasn’t been happening and it’s not going happen. It may improve in years to come but for the moment (as the crisis continues to worsen) such an approach is totally insufficient.

We need to focus on BOTH sides of the equation. Reduce demand by curtailing non EU migration to only absolutely ESSENTIAL workers.
Oh what your restaurant is struggling now because you can’t get as many cheap waiters that will work for peanuts?? Sorry, but if a reduction in exploitable cheap labour is the rock upon which your business founders then it probably wasn’t entirely viable for Ireland in the first place.

We need to reduce the unnecessary people coming in driving demand AND ramp up housing construction as much as we can.

The issue is driven by factors on both sides of the equation and as such we must address the issues on both sides of the equation. To focus only on one side, whichever that is, is a fools errand that has, and will, continue to get us nowhere.

Strange, so is his brother. Social welfare and all associated benefits going into their abode for some 14 persons. It’s a mad little country we live in.

The problem I have with this though — and the problem I have with the Right on things like this — is that it's all set out as a simple positive equation. There is rarely, if ever, an acknowledgement of what needs to be sacrificed or what the downsides are.

So let's suppose we reduced migration which then deprived businesses of access to cheaper labour. They would then need to either (a) employ less people (ie, less jobs); or (b) employ Irish-born workers at salaries that actually make it worthwhile for an increasingly educated workforce — then pass the increased cost of staffing to the customer.

In that latter scenario, prices would have to increase and costs would go up. The refrain would probably be — ah, but house prices will go down because there is less immigration. OK, but if the idea is that businesses would hire Irish born people and pay them a better wage to do the jobs formerly done by migrants, then that involves retaining a portion of the population that would otherwise have gone to work elsewhere. The question of how much you'd have to decrease immigration to impact house prices is unclear — in Australia the prices have continued to rise despite declining immigration.

It’s not an assumption, I recall you mentioned you were a homeowner earlier in the thread. Am I mistaken?

And yes, we are not controlling demand to an effective enough degree. Hence our population increases well outstripping our capacity to meet the increased demand, hence the continually spiralling prices.

Property is worthless, only kept alive by govt contract, will never be a hotel again, need far too much capex to make sense even if given to an operator for free

Its not just the developers, its the vulture funds/international lenders that see Irish property as a cash cow.

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/government-buys-citywest-hotel-and-convention-centre-for-148m/a798079316.html

There's a tremendous stench of sleaze and incompetence from this.

We sold this hotel to private interests a few years back for €30m. We're now buying it back at 5x the cost, and that's after paying hundreds of millions to the previous owners already!

Loads of people have made fortunes from picking up cheap local rundown hotels for a song and renting them to the government and suddenly becoming millionaires. Get used to it lads, as long as we have a minimum of 15000 asylum seekers arriving that we need to accommodate due to our international obligations we have no choice

I think one of the other things people tend to leave out in the "increase supply only" argument is that without limits on inward migration, increased supply will stimulate further increases in immigration thus negating much of the benefit of increased supply.

This is evidenced by articles in the press about employers not being able to import labour due to lack of housing supply. Increase housing supply and we can increase immigration accordingly but we are back to square one on housing problems.

It does sometimes feel like there's a bit of whining when it comes to this whole "the media won't report this" thing. Literally an article here spelling out that accommodation costs will reach €1.2 billion:

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/asylum-seeker-accommodation-costs-will-reach-12bn-this-year-at-average-of-100-per-head-per-night/a1099623443.html

And another pointing out costs last year:

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/state-spend-on-asylum-seekers-surges-by-54-per-cent-to-e1bn-in-2024-1730035.html

Yes, they reported the total amounts but the devil is in the detail as the saying goes. How many media outlets have actually 'followed the money' properly. A few have mentioned the likes of Banty, Healy Rae and Utmasta etc but RTE certainly haven't gone into the forensic detail that they have on the deportation flight.

Google 'RTE Utmasta' for example, search for 'McEnaney asylum seekers RTE' or 'Healy-Rae asylum seekers RTE' and see how many results come up. I'll give you a clue, it's not many. The national broadcaster that posits itself as one of the most trusted and unbiased news sources strangely turns a blind eye when it comes to where the money is going.

Have Gript asked about it? Has Toibin or anyone else raised questions about it?

https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2022/11/02/shock-in-monaghan-over-unexplained-death-of-man-staying-at-asylum-seeker-centre/

The above article appears to suggest that the Gardai did not believe that the lad had died from his head injuries. So I don't know — it may just be that investigations are ongoing or it may just be that no further investigations were deemed unnecessary. Either way, it would appear that there isn't much interest in the story across the board, which may simply be a factor that unfortunately people are less interested in the story of some unknown refugee passing away rather than it being a conspiracy of silence.

But it seems like everyone is "looking the other way" on that one — which may simply suggest that there is no further information to report on at this time or there just isn't a further story.

As for the other issue you mention. This was reported in Dublin Live, which is owned by the massive news corporation Reach plc, which itself owns a number of major newspapers:

https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/asylum-seeker-stabbed-death-dublin-31025389

Other articles which mention it:

https://m.sundayworld.com/crime/irish-crime/suspect-in-fatal-stabbing-of-quham-babatunde-was-on-bail-for-violent-incident-involving-knife/a606964202.html

https://extra.ie/2025/02/27/news/irish-news/asylum-seekers-facing-charges

I am unsure to what extent it may be the case that reporting on this issue reflected the fact that the deceased had faced allegations of rape but the allegations may not have been verifiable, or have undergone due process. But irrespective of that, the information is very much out there in major media sources. I mean, the verification used by Dublin Live for example was that "his pals" verified the story (noting also that they seemed to believe his protestations of innocence).