Comment
DAMIEN LANE
Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda plan has rumbled our soft asylum underbelly, it’s now sink or swim for Government
Have the Brits got one up on us?
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HELEN has gone to war with Rishi.
Justice Minister McEntee has realised (belatedly - she was told TWO YEARS AGO) that the British Rwanda policy is forcing failed asylum seekers to flee the UK and come here in big numbers.
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Tanaiste Micheal Martin said this week that 80% of new arrivals are coming over the border with Northern Ireland. The figure is close to 90%.
And in the UK, with flights to Rwanda due to take off in as little as 10 to 12 weeks, worried asylum seekers have gone into hiding.
The UK authorities this week admitted they have only been able to locate 40 per cent of the estimated 40,000 asylum seekers who have been denied status in Britain. That means 24,000 migrants have vanished to the four corners of the UK.
On Channel 4 news this week, Foreign Affairs correspondent, Paraic O’Brien interviewed two men, one from Jordan, the other from Afghanistan outside the International Protection Office in Dublin.
Read more in News
Both admitted they came here from the UK because they didn’t want to be packed off to Rwanda.
There are many more like these two. And the Irish government is desperately scrambling to find a way to stop them coming here. But it’s a difficult, if not impossible task.
As we scurry to come up with emergency laws to send them back and send extra gardai to police the supposedly frictionless border with the North, Rishi Sunak is rubbing his hands with glee. Of course he is.
We are at sixes and sevens, wearing clod-hoppers and putting both feet into the mess without really understanding it.
Most read in The Irish Sun
In London, Rishi boasted this week that the fact so many asylum seekers are coming to Ireland is proof positive his Rwanda plan is working.
The Rwanda plan has had a difficult birth. It is highly controversial, and in effect, contravenes the European Convention on the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.
Britain sends first ever migrant to Rwanda in historic move that paves way to ‘stop the boats’ and kick out thousands more
Undeterred, Rishi’s Tories, prodded forward by a hard-right cabal in Westminster, have pushed through the Rwanda legislation in parliament, and despite vocal opposition in the House of Lords, managed to get the thing passed there too in the last two weeks.
The flights to Kigali, the Rwandan capital will begin by the end of June, Rishi says. And nothing anyone can say or do will stop his government from delivering on the promise to ‘Stop The Boats’ ferrying refugees to Britain from northern France.
Ploughing ahead
He and the Tories believe the prospect of being sent to Rwanda, which is run by the autocrat Paul Kagame, is deterrent enough.
Kagame rules a land which regularly imprisons opposition leaders and journalists on trumped up charges.
It is not a safe place, clearly, but the UK and Rwanda have done a £370m deal to house UK asylum seekers for the next five years.
Rwanda NOT being safe hasn’t stopped Rishi from ploughing ahead. He knows the policy is popular with many Brits. The daily boat loads of unfortunates coming across the English channel to the UK have hardened hearts.
Political win
Like here, expensive housing and a cost of living crisis, fuelled by high inflation, means most don’t welcome asylum seekers with open arms.
Rwanda is a political win for the Tories. Won’t stop them being trounced by Labour at the next Election, but 10 years in power leaves a voter, even those sympathetic to the Tories, weary.
Rwanda may well soften the electoral blow, because it plays so well.
As is ever the case, however, seismic policy change in Britain affects its nearest neighbour, us, the most.
Tidal wave
Brexit was a massive challenge to Ireland. Thankfully, shrewd politics saved us.
And yes, Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney deserve praise for navigating Brexit’s choppy waters. We’re out the other side of that maelstrom, largely unscathed. Our booming economy is testament to that.
Now, we’ve been hit by another British tidal wave thanks to the Rwanda plan.
The government, knowing it has little time to act to stem an inevitable flow of asylum seekers from there to here (through Northern Ireland) agreed emergency legislation on Tuesday night to send them back to Britain.
'I want a deterrent'
The new law gives legal weight to an agreement between Britain and Ireland in 2020, whereby an asylum applicant who arrives here after already having made an application in Britain would be sent back. And vice versa.
However, Rishi seemed to tear up that agreement on Monday this week.
He told ITV: “We’re not going to accept returns from the European Union via Ireland when the EU doesn’t accept returns back to France, where illegal migrants are coming from.
“Of course we’re not going to do that. I’m determined to get our Rwanda scheme up and running because I want a deterrent.”
What should we do?
He added that he ‘wasn’t interested’ in a deal with Ireland. Go to hell Helen, in other words.
So, the ball is in our court. What to do?
Enacting a tough new law to send asylum seekers back to the UK is one thing. We all know, especially with this government, that actions will speak louder than words printed on a piece of official paper.
Taoiseach Simon Harris has said that Ireland will not provide a “loophole for anybody else’s migration challenges.”
Cops to border
Tough talk from the top, but will we see anything done on the ground?
Have the Brits got one up on us?
In the short term, the government has asked the gardai to send cops to the border to police arrivals.
Around 100 are set to be deployed, which if we’re honest is like trying to stop the tide coming in with a bucket and spade. It’s tokenistic, a political carrot. Not enough.
Sink or swim
And all the while, the menace of the Far Right, who have whipped up locals across the country under their hateful banner that proclaims ‘Ireland is full’, will privately be delighted at the latest crisis to send this government wobbling. Grist to their mill.
The local and European elections are around the corner, in early June, and immigration has again become the hot potato Government candidates will have to juggle without dropping.
The next few weeks and how the government handles Rishi’s asylum bomb will tell us a lot about Simon Harris’s ability as Taoiseach.
It’s sink or swim.
FLAVOUR TO GO UP IN SMOKE
I GREW up eating Sam Spudz smokey bacon crisps. So delicious they left your tongue tingling with ecstasy.
Sam Spudz died in 1996 when crisp giant Tayto took them over.
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They transmogrified into Hunky Dorys, but they weren’t a patch on Sam Spudz, to my taste, anyhow.
Now, however, the death of smokey bacon crisps is upon us, folks.
Why? Well, aparently they make your pecker fall off (if you have one) and can give you cancer.
The EU, in its wisdom, has decided to outlaw smoke flavouring in all foods, including the humble bag of crisps.
The ban comes hot on the heels of a recommendation by the European Food Safety Authority. Smoked ham is also for the chop.
I must’ve eaten a MILLION bags of smokey bacon crisps when I was a lad, and, eh, my lad is in perfect working order, thank you very much.
I’m being frivolous, of course, but the ban will have a detrimental effect on the many food processing companies that operate and employ thousands of people, not just in Ireland, but across the European Union.
The government may try and seek a derogation for Irish staples, much as they did when Brussels allowed them to continue to sell Red Lemonade, despite the fact it is loaded with a red dye called Red 2G or E128, which has the potential to cause cancer when taken in large doses.
In our current woke world, I doubt Taoiseach Simon Harris would find a sympathetic ear.
GLOOMY FOR GIRLS
THE effervescent Cyndi Lauper famously sang Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
And they did, in spades, back in the 1980s.
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Fast forward 40 years and it seems, while girls may still want to have fun, they are largely miserable with their lot.
The University of Galway asked 9,000 primary school kids a series of questions, including how happy they are with their lives and just 22 per cent of girls aged 10 to 17 said they were very happy – an astonishingly low number.
The pandemic affected kids’ mental health, but the darkening online world, where bullying is rife, heaps more misery on our young women.
This report should be a wake up call to both government and parents.
ORANGE IS DON'S COLOUR
DONALD Trump is one step away from a jail cell, and he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet.
The judge presiding over the former US President’s hush-money trial in New York found Trump in contempt this week for repeatedly defying a gag order prohibiting him from talking about witnesses, court officials or members of the jury.
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Prosecutors had alleged ten violations, including Trump’s claim that the jury was “mostly Democrats”.
Judge Juan Merchan, who had reached the end of his tether, found the Orange One in contempt on nine violations and fined him $9,000. He warned Trump that if he were to attack the court again he’d “impose an incarceratory sentence” if necessary.
If Trump is sent to the clink, his Secret Service detail will have to go with him. They are legally bound to protect him.
The Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have already drawn up contingency plans.
Trump can’t keep his trap shut, so put a fiver on him soon wearing an orange jumpsuit to match his complexion.
HSE MUST WAKE UP
WOULD you go to A&E if you were ill?
The majority of people in Limerick, Clare and Tipperary wouldn’t dare attend the emergency department at University Hospital Limerick, campaigners have warned.
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And who could blame them after an inquest into the death of Aoife Johnston on December 19, 2022, described the hospital as a “death trap”.
The 16-year-old died from meningitis after lying in agony for 12 hours on two chairs pushed together in the hospital.
Medics waited too long to give Aoife the antibiotics that could have saved her life.
But gross overcrowding – there were 191 patients in A&E on the night she died – led to a situation where staff couldn’t do their jobs properly. Inevitably, errors were made.
Her death should serve as a wake-up call for the HSE.
It receives €24billion a year in funding yet can’t provide proper hospital care.
Inefficiency is its middle name.