I think the courts might have something to say about it. I’ll know more later in the week.
As it stands I’m a bit conflicted. Smirking Sunak gloating about it during the week meant that it couldn’t be ignored. Ireland takes many, many more refugees than the UK does and we have an infrastructural deficit that the UK doesn’t have. We don’t have schools and hospitals and houses enough. A decade of no money because of the bail in by the IMF, a rapidly rising population well above predictions, and a century of underdevelopment all contribute.
My understanding is that legally the first country is obliged to deal with refugees but…. The UK is not a safe destination to deport someone to.
That’s it. That’s all you have to do. Build public housing on public land.
Homeless people won’t be in temporary accommodation. Temporary accommodation will be available when you need it. Crack down on illegal Air b’n’b Hotels. Treat illegal landlords openly flouting the law like you would if they were on the dole and on the fiddle.
It’s not hard.
ETA
This government have floated the idea of paying off other countries to reduce asylum seekers here. So they have the money to fix the problems and pull the rug from under racists. They just choose not to because of rigid right wing neoliberal dogma about public spending and housing.
I mean, correct me if I’m wrong on this, but isn’t lots of Ireland pretty rural and open? Couldn’t some of that land be turned to housing? We are talking about a country that still has less people than before An Gorta Mor, right? Like by several million people?
The foundational creation myth of the Irish nation is the Lebor Gabála Érenn — the “Book of Invasions of Ireland”. Your own mythology explicitly states that everyone who has ever lived in Ireland was part of a wave of invaders. And it didn’t stop after the mythological times: after the Partholonians, and the Nemedians, and the Fir Bolg, and the Tuatha Dé Danann, and the Milesians, then there came the Christians, and the Vikings, and the Normans.
Your own mythology says that people coming to Ireland is not just normal, it’s inevitable.
But then, I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re barely literate in English, agus níl aon fhocal amháin Gaeilge agaibh ar fad, a h-amadáiní.
I think the bigger issue is just how many people Ireland has given up in the past two centuries to the rest of the world. This idea that now they can’t welcome strangers who are likewise fleeing sometimes awful situations when so many Irish went away to escape colonialism and the aftereffects of colonialism is a bit maddening.
