By Ciarán Quinn
A Letter from Ireland
a Chara,
It was as depressingly predictable as showers after the sun in Ireland. On Saturday far-right groups in Ireland organized an anti-immigration rally in Dublin. I knew that the event would be followed by disinformation and confusion.
Those marching carried tricolors and the flag of the Irish Republic that flew over the GPO. Conor McGregor in a video message invoked the memory of men and women of the Rising to promote the march. McGregor was recently found liable in a civil court for rape and admitted to taking cocaine.
The 1916 Irish Proclamation makes clear, that “no one who serves that cause will dishonor it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine.”
The state broadcaster put the turnout for what was billed as a national rally at 5,000. By the time it was reported on far-right web channels, the number had swollen to an unbelievable 110,000. An incredible number with zero creditability.
Across social media post after post claimed Ireland is full as if we are about to sink into the Atlantic.
If Ireland is full and at crisis point, will parents be penalized for having children? Will newborns be interned by the state to be released when space is available? Will the gates be closed to all including returning Irish emigrates?
Of course not, because the idea of a country being full is nonsense. The population of Ireland has not yet recovered from the famine, we have plenty of land and wealth.
What we have in Ireland, particularly in the South is a housing crisis. Ending immigration tomorrow will not end the housing crisis. But it will create a crisis in our health and care system, in tech, hospitality, and foreign investment industries.
We need affordable homes, reasonable rents and suitable emergency accommodation.
The housing crisis has been created and sustained by successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments. Their housing policies are working for developers, institutional investors, and landlords not the people, renters or the homeless. None of this is the fault of immigrants. It is Irish-made and sustained crisis.
The same parties have created an immigration system that fails those in need and the wider society while lining the pockets of a small wealthy elite who benefit from overpriced “emergency” accommodation. It is neither efficient or effective.
There is genuine anger at how the government parties have allowed these crises to develop. That legitimate anger is being directed at those who are victims of the system and not those in control. An all too familiar playbook.
It is right to be angry. That is why Sinn Féin is committed to building a new and united Ireland.
There is a tiny racist minority those who believe that being Irish is to be white and catholic. A test that I and many of my friends would fail.
They claim to be patriots, I have lived my life surrounded by patriots who were prepared to give up their lives for Ireland. Patriots who lost years to jail for a united Ireland and continue to build that dream day daily. They are appalled at the actions of many on that march.
Theobold Wolf Tone, the father of Irish Republicanism sought to unite ALL under the common banner of Irish men and women to break the link with Britain.
The Proclamation declared, “The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally…”
There was no clauses, color bars, qualifiers, ifs or buts in either of these republican tenets.
Racism, wrapped in the flag of nationalism is an insult to the memory of the patriot dead. You cannot be a racist and an Irish Republican.
Ciarán
Ciarán Quinn is the Sinn Féin Representative to North America
