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

Another Reminder about the EU migration and asylum pact….

On the 27th of June, 2024, the Irish government advised the EU that they intended to opt Ireland into seven legislative acts to transpose the EU migration and asylum pact into Irish law. This was a choice made by the Irish government against the will of the Irish people.

The seven legislative acts are currently being railroaded through the Dail and the Seanad, under a bill called the International Protection Bill 2026. Ireland now has until the 12th of June 2026 to pass this bill into law. One of the legislative acts called the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation will introduce a permanent, mandatory, and what is referred to as a needs-based solidarity mechanism, replacing current ad hoc voluntary solutions. In short, this means that the EU will dictate the number of economic migrants that each member state must admit in any given year, or face a financial penalty of €20,000 per person refused.

The detail coming directly out of the EU is tell us. The asylum and migration management regulation will allow the EU to adopt, by the 15th of October, every year, the following; 

1. An annual report assessing the migratory situation across the EU and in all EU member states.
2. An implementing decision, determining whether a particular member state is under migratory pressure.
3. A proposal for a council implementing act with the number of relocations and financial solidarity contributions required for the upcoming year.

This is referring to the quota of migrants each country will be required to take or the financial penalty payable. And for, based on the above, the council will adopt before the end of the year, a council implementing act establishing the solidarity pool, which will include the specific pledges that each member state has made for each type of solidarity contribution. This is referring to the option chosen by each member state, as in take in a quote of migrants, pay a financial penalty, or make another solidarity contribution. So if the Irish government passed the International Protection Bill 2026 into law, by October of this year, the EU will start determining the number of migrants Ireland must take in 2027 or the financial penalty payable as a result of our refusal.

As stated, the Irish government opted the Irish people into these measures against the will of the Irish people. We had an Opt-out clause and still they chose to Opt us in. People must state to their local politicians, enough is enough.

You can find them below 

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/members/

The bill would make it much easier to deport people but is being currently blocked by our Leftie president (see rte link on previous page) who wants to invite everyone here and pay them welfare

if you want something done about migration you want to support this bill instead of opposing it

but you raised a good point her feet dragging will ensure migrants will cost the state more now, yay

If you feel there are legal issues have you reported same to the Guards?

Is your issue with Ukrainian cars and lack of windscreen paperwork or how they got here? I don't know how many safe countries they drove to to get here, they are permitted to be here.

I think the focus regarding Ukrainians here should solely be focused on our government who are spending huge amounts of money to support these but on the other hand are very reluctant to invest in their own citizens. See the fuel protests, it took the country to be locked down before they reluctantly reduced the price of fuel. Or the lack of investment in social housing, social supports, childcare, schools and our healthcare system.

The lack of a visible disc is not an exact indicator of whether tax / insurance has been paid or not. I am presuming by what you have said here that you actually do take the time to observe whether a Ukrainian vehicle has these discs. I would guess that if you applied the same scrutiny to all vehicles on the road you would find that there are a good few vehicles going about with a missing disc or an outdated disc. This doesn't necessarily mean they haven't paid tax / insurance, it can also mean they just haven't bothered to replace the disc or just forgot. It's happened to me before!

I'd imagine the lack of tax disc probably relates to the fact that Ukrainian vehicles were granted a deferral of tax liability. Insurance on the other hand is mandatory in all cases so Ukrainian vehicles must have it. The reason for no disc could well simply be that there isn't a huge motivating factor to bother to display one, because many foreign vehicles on Irish roads don't have them but the Gardaí can still detect and check the insurance status of a foreign via the relevant database anyway.

Finally, Ukrainian vehicles were exempted from NCT initially but as we are now four years on from the first wave of refugees there may need to be a rethink of that policy for vehicles that may have been here a while now.

Initially I was pretty sympathetic towards Ukrainians coming here, however 4 years on that sympathy has evaporated, the company I work for has many Ukraninian customers, mainly middle aged women for whom spending money is not an issue, now I don't think they're all like that but the cohort I deal with shouldn't be getting a cent from the Irish taxpayer, besides this they've got to be the rudest people I've ever met and in spite of living here for up to 4 years have made zero effort to learn even the most basic English phrases (it's not my place to learn Ukrainian), talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

The range of Ukrainian cars is wild. I've seen some yolks that look like they're literally about to fall apart and are just barely holding together. Then on the other end I've seen Ukrainian Mustangs, AMG mercs, M5 BMWs and even a Corvette..

You'll find that if you arrive at a Garda checkpoint, you will be fined for 'non-display of a current motor tax disc' amounting to €60 should the paperwork be absent, unpaid, or whatever. I know the law is changing soon on that, and it will no longer be compulsory to display a current disc, however it has been law as long as I can remember.

That's for Irish registered vehicles though. Foreign registered vehicles are not required to have a tax disc on display because many foreign countries don't use them (Ukraine included). While after a period of having a foreign registered car in the State you would have to pay Irish tax on it, special dispensation was granted to Ukrainian refugees to defer their tax liability for what I think is 12 months.

I am also not 100% on this one but I thought that if you did have a foreign car here and registered it in Ireland as required, you would have to get an Irish registration plate. So that may also be part of the reason you don't see tax discs on Ukrainian registered cars, because once the car is registered it would have Irish plates and you wouldn't be able to tell it's Ukrainian (aside from it being left hand drive so if you noticed that you'd only know it's from somewhere foreign). Not totally sure on that but I did have to get new plates for my car when I moved permanently down from the North.

Crimea accepted Russia as most were ethnic Russians only tartars a small minority rejected it . In East Ukraine Russian is spoken and TV stations also broadcast in Russian . Russia should have allowed outside inspectors to oversee the referendums there .

I see we are fully back to Russian propaganda when it comes to Ukraine.

Social Media is an absolute scourge designed to seek out the weakest and pray on them.

Yep it boggles my mind that our president would put bogus asylum seekers above the citizens and taxpayers she is meant to represent and is blocking this vital legislation

Even though this Bill has been approved by the Oireachtas, I am more negative than ever about both legal and illegal immigration, and their impact on the housing market.

• I see no efforts to reduce the inflows of bogus AS
• I see very little effort to reduce the processing time for asylum claims towards 1 week, or even the Swiss 24 hrs
• I see little effort to remove thousands of failed AS: the odd deportation plane here and there, but no continual outflow of hundreds of failed AS per week
• Now, we have the prospect of the President referring the Bill to the Supreme Court
• The State actually employs Local Authority Integration Teams LAIT, this is terrible, we pay staff to help bogus AS stay here, instead of paying staff to remove them
• The inflow of UKR refugees continues, we have unbelievably high amounts compared to other countries
• Nobody in Ireland seems to question or think it's wrong that so many UKR refugees have come here, twice as many as FR and IT combined
• I have a feeling that after BOTP expires, we will not ask the UKR people to go home
• I see no sign of any cuts to inflows of student or work visas

That map is set to an isolated context though. Many other countries in Europe have been shouldering the burden for many years where we remained sheltered (like Italy and Greece whose lighter shade of blue on that map belies the huge issues they have faced). Not only that, Ukrainians are Europeans and are coming from a developed country with a skilled workforce (certainly at least in relation to the list of other countries where large portions of the global refugee population have come from). For those whose opposition to migration tends towards concerns about assimilability, and in a context where Ireland already has a significant population of assimilated Eastern Europeans, Ukrainians present a lesser concern than some other nationalities. If I was to stick a poll up here asking would people have preferred, if forced to choose, that we got shafted with 100,000 Ukrainians from 2022 or 100,000 Syrians from 2015, we know what the popular answer would be.

But beyond that, nobody is really arguing with you. I tend to find on here that people present this stuff as if there is a huge body of people out there or even within the government who completely disagree with the argument that we ended up overstretched. The government have been saying for ages the numbers were too high and yet the view on here seems to dismiss that. What I do think people get wrong on here however is that they make no allowance for the fact that intentions, policy and reality don't always sit well together — and people just routinely ignore the reality of what the Ukraine War presented in terms of practical difficulty, combined with the fact that other countries have more matured and developed systems for handling this kind of thing (which is another indicator of how relatively sheltered we have been up to now). You just put it all down to pathological peace n' love empaths being too soft when much of it came down to the reality of what happens when 6 million people in Europe suddenly disperse outwards.