Comment - The Government is pandering to the right on immigration

The Irish Government released a new package of measures on migration and asylum laws last week.

The Justice Department is tightening rules around family reunification and is increasing the residency requirement for citizenship from three to five years.

They'll also seek a fee from eligible IPAS residents to cover some of their accommodation costs.

It's another example of Justice Minister Jim O'Callaghan's tougher stance on migration than previous editions of this Government.

These measures will also coincide with the EU Migration and Asylum Pact which becomes operational next June.

Social issues vary across the Bloc, but whether it's a housing crisis, overrun state services or high crime rates, the finger is being pointed at those fleeing wars, religious persecution and extreme poverty.

The EU's most recent departure, the UK, is leading the charge when it comes to the politics of affect on migration. They're under pressure from growing far right anti-migration sentiment which has been capitalised on by Nigel Farage's Reform UK.

The Irish Government feels a similar pressure and these latest migration measures are another example of panicked populist policy aimed at a portion of society that will never support them.

There is no doubt that the right in Ireland has grown in recent times, however the Government should look closer at who is driving this, still relatively small, but highly vocal segment of society.

Last week District Magazine pointed out that a new feature on X (formerly twitter) reveals where an account is actually based, revealing a trend of X accounts based in the UK posing as far right Irish republicans.

Anti-migrant messaging and related tensions in Ireland are often stoked by social media accounts operating from the UK, inflating the sense of national sentiment around this issue.

Outside interest in Ireland's anti-migrant movement isn't just online. Right wing UK news organisations like Rebel News and GB News have been known to travel to Ireland and cover anti-migrant demonstrations, including the most recent riots in Citywest.

To some extent, it is understandable why the UK's Labour Party is pandering to the right: Reform is the big bad wolf on their doorstep, and they could very well blow the house down.

However, the Irish Government's nearest threat isn't to right, it's over on the left.

Independent Ireland, Aontú and a small number of Independent TD's who would consider themselves on the right, make up only a small cohort of the total 174 seats in Dáil Éireann.

And while their numbers will no doubt grow in the next general election, the right in Ireland will pose nowhere near the risk Reform UK now poses to the governing Labour Party.

The Irish establishment seems to have quickly forgotten about their shambolic performance in the latest presidential election.

Members of this current crumbling coalition would be wise to reason with the electorate that granted Catherine Connolly the highest number of first preference votes in presidential history.

Ciara Smyth, Law and Human Rights Professor at the University of Galway, summarised the Government's lack of political awareness in a recent piece in the Irish Times.

Rather than address the real root causes of political dissatisfaction in Ireland, it suits the Government to point to asylum seekers as the problem – something the far right is happy to capitalise on. However, this Government strategy is ultimately self-defeating: when centrist parties move to the right, this simply emboldens the right and the centre loses out," said Smyth.

Those who list immigration, as what they are worried about most in Ireland, will never vote for the establishment. They're pissed off that they didn't have a candidate to vote for in the presidential election and there's no policy measure, except maybe closing every IPAS centre in the country, that would make them vote Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael.

There's no doubt the current asylum system isn't functioning. For some it's a drain on the exchequer that makes our streets less safe, for others it's a societal eyesore leaving those most vulnerable in a state of limbo and uncertainty for long periods of time.

The Government however, continues to make decisions that will appease neither side of the electorate.

A deportation flight this year that returned a number of Nigerians had children on board who had been attending school in Ireland for three years.

It cost €324,714 to deport just 35 people on that one flight to Lagos. That's the equivalent of 1,200 Christmas energy credits, over 5,000 GP visits or one Leinster House bike shed.

Some people value the optics of deportation flights, they're an emotive scene that appears to be tough on immigration and have drawn a lot of media attention.

The reality, however, is that only six charter flights have departed Ireland this year have and have removed just 182 people who were subject to deportation orders.

This is a drop in the ocean compared to the near 4,000 deportation orders which have been signed this year so far. 

In September, Jim O’Callaghan increased reintegration assistance from €2,000 per family unit to €10,000. The increased grant only applied to those who were in the International Protection process before the 28th of that month.

The majority of IPAS applicants who leave Ireland do so voluntarily and although the Justice Department say this is preferred method of return, it is the expensive charade of deportation flights that garners attention.

The Irish Examiner recently documented a deportation flight this year. The footage shows the incredible time and resources it took to deport 52 Georgians, only one of which had a criminal record.

The Government likes to be seen to be tough on migration although the majority of those exiting IPAS are being paid to do so.

A recent Sunday Business Post / Red C poll revealed that 72% of respondents support Jim O'Callaghan's tightening of immigration and asylum laws.

O'Callaghan is fond of repeating that Ireland's population growth is seven times that of the EU average at 1.6% and that the majority of that growth is being driven by inward migration.

International protection which actually falls under Jim O'Callaghan's remit only accounts for a small share of total population growth.

The number of people coming to Ireland seeking asylum has been falling following a post Covid-19 spike coupled with increased numbers from Ukraine following the beginning of Russia's invasion.

The most recent stats from the International Protection Office show applications are down by 35% in the year to October compared with the same period in 2024.

Similarly 125,300 people immigrated to Ireland in the 12-months to April 2025, which is a 16% decrease from the same period of 2024. 

The latest CSO stats show that non-Irish nationals, which would include a number of International Protection applicants, accounted for 21.0% of all employments in Ireland in Q2 of 2025.

Sinéad Gibney TD, of the Social Democrats laid out of the crux of the Government's messaging on migration on RTE's The Week in Politics recently,

"it's really important that we distinguish the two here … migration is policy that is set in the Department of Enterprise versus International Protection … which is set at the Department of Justice, they are completely separate issues which this government is conflating."

"Ireland is engaged at the moment, it seems to me, in a race to the bottom, in terms of international protection."

The key for the Government is in the optics, target asylum seekers who have been villainised in our society by the far-right, while continuing to let economic migrants do the jobs we can't fill with our own population.

This coalition will eventually come to an end and with the absence of the Green Party this time around, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will find it hard to scapegoat a group of Independent's and instead will start to point the finger at each other.

But in the meantime they should stop pandering to the right and blaming IPAS applicants for failures on housing, public services, transport and whatever else the electorate will consider this country to be lacking by the next general election at the end of 2029.

And although this Government has 80 percent of its lifespan remaining, Connolly's landslide victory over the establishment has left some of the electorate with their eyes set on the next time they'll get to vote.

Maybe it's those voters who opted for Connolly over Heather Humphreys that the coalition should be pandering to, not those who mostly repost 'Ireland is full' shtick on X from accounts named No.1IrishPatriot that are actually based in the UK.