Yerra more simplicity "common sense" speeches in the Dáil doesn't address the complexity of the immigration question but I would advocate for reducing the rate of immigration somewhat to ease pressure not just on housing but on many services. Our population has expanded by 40% in 20 years, even the likes of Uisce Éireann say they can't possible deliver the required infrastructure to meet the needs of the growing population (a mix of the natural birth rate and immigration).
The complexity arises when you stop giving visas or in some discourage legal or illegal migration. If a big Cork tech company like Apple or Dell-EMC want to expand and add say 200 new workers they're not going to get most of them here so you might say 'tough shit lads, you can't expand your business, Ireland is full'. Then that investment goes elsewhere and you risk losing a lot of inward investment because companies start to look elsewhere. We can probably swallow a lot of that in the short term because the economy is doing so well and that's why I would advocate some reduction. I think the government is probably justified in worrying that with Trump trying to aggressively lure U.S. tech and pharma out of Ireland back "home" that they are very wary of giving them an excuse to do that. Particularly, reducing the supply of labour.
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So from these rough 2023-2024 figures, what would people here reduce in 2026? Non-EU labour counts for 30k per year so you could probably take 20k of that out as about 30% are in health and social work etc (Asians now make up a large percentage of HSE staff because we demand better healthcare and hospitals and also because the native voting population is getting older and need more care).
"Family permits" aren't very high but if you want better cancer care and you're trying to fill healthcare posts, doctors, nurses, med lab positions then you're going to have to allow Indians, Pakistanis, Nigerian and Bangladeshi health experts to bring their families here too. They're not going to move here without them. You might be able to take 2-3k off that figure.
We could probably reduce asylum seekers a bit by making Ireland less attractive, maybe shave 2-3k off the 17k+. This seems to be pretty much the only focus of anti-immigration groups presumably because they are more foreign and from countries that put fear into some people.
So Coachy's "
Anti-Immigrant Platform For Concerned Citizens and Im-Not-Racist-Meself-But-s" would reduce inward migration by about 40k a year on a 140k annual total.
Would be interested in a genuine discussion to hear how people here would reduce migration based on the figures above.
