Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

It was very strange yesterday on Leaders' Questions. I counted no fewer than seven times when Jack Chambers, stepping in for the Taoiseach, called for a debate on our migration policy. This is kind of the last refuge of the scoundrel. Rather than actually coming out and arguing for a position, they just say we need to have a debate about it, suggesting that somehow they are not able to have a debate. They are able to have a debate; they are the Ministers responsible for Government policy. It has become clear that what the Government wants is not a debate. What it wants is a free run to engage in dog-whistling and in scapegoating of asylum seekers and for that not to be challenged. Simon Harris was deliberately conflating migration numbers in general with a small number of asylum seekers who had not been deported. When Fintan O'Toole very accurately and precisely skewered that and exposed the misinformation that Simon Harris was engaged in, and when that was then echoed and emphasised by some Opposition parties, the response by Simon Harris to this debate happening was to accuse us of shutting down debate. The debate is not just that you get to say whatever you want or that you get to throw out your dog-whistles and not be challenged on it. You will be challenged on it.

The truth is that the Government does not want to significantly change aspects of our migration policy. If it did, it would bring forward those proposals. It wants to stick with the current migration policy, but add in some more elements of performative cruelty to dog-whistle, to scapegoat asylum seekers and to distract from its failures in government. The idea, as it was suggested by a Fianna Fáil TD, that by doing so they will cut across the rise of the far right and that this is what the evidence across Europe shows is ridiculous. All the evidence shows that as the establishment moves to the right, it reinforces the rhetoric and analyses of the far right. It simply gives them more and more space because the establishment cedes ground to them. Fintan O'Toole was absolutely correct in analysing why this is happening:

There is a question that hovers over Irish politics: what will the parties of power do when they start to panic about losing it? Last week, after their joint debacle in the presidential election, we got the grim answer: turn on immigrants.

It is not the first time we got the grim answer. We got the grim answer in the run-up to the local elections, where Sinn Féin deserves a fell-for-it award where it tried to compete in being more anti-immigrant than the Government, which resulted in a disastrous election for Sinn Féin because it all became about immigration. The Government earlier stated that it was overrun at that stage and that the result was that people were on the canal. That is not what happened. That is not true. There were empty beds in the system. The Government chose to put people on the canal because it wanted to make people homeless in order to centre the issue of immigration and say that was the problem. It is all an incredible distraction technique to make people think that the problems in our society, the housing crisis, the health crisis and the cost-of-living crisis and the causes of those problems are not those at the top, those who profit from those crises, not the Government that represents those forces that profit, but the most vulnerable people.

The latest act of performative cruelty or suggestion, which is being trailed again and again, is the idea that the Government is going to charge people who are working for staying in IPAS accommodation. It is presented as just common sense. Why would people not be paying? Well, one reason might be that it is going to cost more to implement than the Government will raise. There is also a very good reason that we do not charge people who stay in, for example, emergency accommodation. We want them to actually get out of emergency accommodation. The Government is going to keep people in poverty in these systems just so it can have some performative cruelty. This is the thin end of the wedge. If the Government gets away with doing this for asylum seekers in their emergency accommodation, is it going to do the same for homeless people? Is the Government going to use that horrendous attack? If it sets up the system, spends millions of euros on it and establishes the principle that if people work while in State-provided accommodation they should pay, then all homeless people will be next. That is why we must stand against this divisive policy.

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