Immigration and Ireland - MEGATHREAD *Mod Note Added 02/09/25*

Late to the party on this comment but just even for the sake of devil's advocacy here, if we are talking about people hating their own country or others in it, it does seem to me that the people who hate Ireland the most are those who are constantly telling us how it is being / has been destroyed, is run by traitorous ghouls, is inhabited by liberal snowflakes, has been rendered a poor place to live — and generally people who just seem to do nothing but complain about Ireland, telling us all about the things they dislike or wish would stop, while seemingly never presenting a positive constructive argument for Ireland's future that steps away from telling us all that we need to be angry and unhappy about everything.

I mean, it's easy to talk about how "people make the tricolour a symbol of something" when people out there have decided that the tricolour is a commodity of their own political persuasion and can be used to de-Irishise anyone who disagrees with them. That in itself is another form of hating your own - i.e. "I wave the tricolour at anti-immigration protests and therefore if people find that distasteful it just means they hate the flag because they hate Ireland".

And the problem is, it all gets so tiresome after a while. I used to post on this thread regularly but after a while you realise it just becomes a never-ending carousel of people coming on to moan endlessly about the same stuff over and over again with no real attempt to seek balance or constructive development of the argument. Check out this crime committed by a foreigner, check out this stat about IPAs, let's lament the fall of our country.

Eventually, electorates across the Western world are going to realise that the anger and constant discontentment they have been fed by Right-wing politicians and media as a motivator for political movement are just that — anger and discontentment with no actual direction — and they will tire of it.

Well, not really a crystal ball, I'm actually just looking around at what's been going on in the world. Things like Brexit and Trump — all these big ticket victories for the Right in their crusade against migration, have all ended up (or are in the process of ending up) as being looked at as little more than outbursts of directionless anger which offer no sustainable positive path into the future.

Yeah, they did, after experiencing a spike in 2015 in the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis which then heralded an adjustment to their policy. Their policy was reactive, not proactive. Ireland avoided the Syrian crisis to a large extent, and it was the Ukrainian crisis which was our "Syria 2015" — only this time it was even more difficult to handle because this was a war in Europe itself and the largest displacement of people in Europe since WWII. Denmark didn't rely on some great Brexiteer-like "Let's all get angry and let's ream off the list of ills brought by foreigners" strategy, but instead relied on more pragmatic and policy-driven motivations. Bear in mind, strategies like that rely on co-operation and good engagement / trust between citizens and State institutions / politicians. They don't fare as well in climates where the people are being told that the government and politicians and State institutions and NGOs are all nefarious traitorous types who hate the people. Avoiding the trap which Right wingers so often fall into (i.e. engender suspicion towards the motivation, intent and culture of foreigners) also helps you bring Lefties with you on the journey, which means you get a more centrist and therefore more universally accepted and sustainable policy. It's not to say that Denmark has none of those things, but the success of their policy (for now) does seem to have a good deal of foundation in the sobriety with which they pursued it.

And they've had 11 years since the Syrian crisis. We are barely 4 years on from the greatest European refugee crises in most of our lifetimes and there has been universal acceptance of the fact (including from the government, which is routinely ignored on here) that we need to try do things differently.

Puskas wife is going to be deported when she gets out later on in the year.

But of course this being soft mark Ireland she will only be banned from coming back for the next 10 years instead of a lifetime ban which is what it should be.

I see there was rioting between the residence in Citywest the other night, so when the government build another 7 super sites (it will never happen) they'll just spread the cultural atmosphere around the country 😏

They shouldn't be given the choice.

I'm not against helping Ukrainians and giving them safe harbor. They are effectively invited in the broader EU interest so it's not fraudulent. The real problem for me is illegal fraudsters coming from Somalia etc and tipping across the border in NI with their shocking overrepresentation in crime statistics.

Whether or not Ukrainians stay or go home should depend on the needs of the war e.g. if they need soldiers/participants to their economy→ go home. If they need to be preserved to win the population pyramid battle against Russia after the war → stay a while. However I would be giving permanent residence to Ukrainians or their families.

Staying here in Ireland must feel like winning the lotto for Ukrainians.

Jesus. I think if I ever got to a point in my life where I looked at a literal refugee and said to myself, wow they have won the lottery, I would probably need to reassess.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/16/russia-attack-ukraine-drones-missiles-kyiv-odesa-volodymyr-zelenskyy

Yes, winning the lottery where the price of a ticket is the invasion of your land by a foreign aggressor, the upturning of your entire life away from everything you have ever known, the destruction of your city, and the prospect that if you do ever return to Ukraine you may not be able to return home unless you want to accept living under Russian rule that may well be imposed in some eastern regions.

Well I don't understand why you're telling me to calm down. What I posted was the reality of the situation, which you don't appear to dispute.

I do have an issue with taxpayer money being used to pay people to leave but I am also generally OK with the government trying steps that might help to alleviate the asylum / refugee burden. We are forever being pointed to Denmark on here as the exemplar for other countries to follow, well, they have a similar pay-to-leave policy.

It's unclear to me how much taxpayer money this will actually cost in real terms as uptake for these schemes have been modest in other countries. But at the end of the day, if it's offering both an incentive for a refugee to leave and dignified means of encouraging voluntary departure then why not try it? If it doesn't get much uptake then the payouts wouldn't happen anyway presumably.

Mind boggling that they can drive with no insurance. Look how quickly the government can ignore laws when it suits them.

Their vehicles will have already been subject to tax by law in Ukraine first of all. Second of all, the alleviation of tax duty was a temporary measure (more so a deferral of tax liability really as they will eventually have to pay) aimed at reducing the administrative and financial burden on Ukrainian refugees on basic humanitarian grounds (noting that for many of them, their car was also one of the few valuable assets they could actually attempt to bring with them never mind its importance to them for actually getting around). It's also important to remember here that implementing a strict tax system on Ukrainian vehicles from the word Go would have created an administrative burden on the State too as we would have had to work through all that and process all the various cases in the midst of what was already an administrative nightmare for the State in scrambling to deal with the main issue: the arrival of people, not cars.

I'm not really quite sure on the insurance point. My understanding is that all vehicles on the road require insurance and all State guidance appears to be fairly clear that there is no permitted exemption here for Ukrainians.