The Irish Have Had Enough

In March this year, the Government of Ireland held two referendums to amend the Constitution. One was regarding the family. Value all our families. Vote Yes, Yes! The current wording of Article 41.1.1° of the Constitution read: “The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society”, well, the Government wanted to add: The State recognises the Family, “whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships”. They also wanted to modify 41.3.1°: “The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded”, by deleting that last part, basically saying that the family was no longer going to be founded on marriage. They gave the people a pretty simple instruction, Vote Yes!, but the Irish people didn’t listen and overwhelmingly voted No. 67% to 32%. It’s kind of like what happened here in Australia with the Indigenous Voice referendum. The Government (and the supermarkets) wanted us to vote Yes, but Australians just didn’t listen and voted No.

The second referendum was about Care in the home. Article 41.2 stated: “In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.” Well, they wanted to delete all that, because it contained the words “woman” and “mothers”, and nobody seems to know what the word “woman” means anymore, not to mention that using the word “mother” makes some people feel bad, so they wanted to replace the whole lot with something else more politically correct. The Irish people were given a simple instruction, Vote Yes! But what did they do? They voted No even worse than before. Almost 74% No to 26% Yes. The Irish didn’t want the Government changing their traditional family values. As our media here in Australia put it, “Irish voters reject changing ‘sexist’ language in constitution” – I guess the Irish are sexist then, because SBS Australia said so – “Irish voters have overwhelmingly voted no in a dual referendum on redefining family and women’s roles in the constitution.” Remember, this result came despite the fact that the government, and most opposition parties, had supported the proposed changes. One thing I’ve noticed about the Irish, they don’t get pushed around.

Well, fast forward a month or so later, and the Irish have had enough. They have been out on the streets protesting in the capital of Dublin. You won’t hear about on the news, though, well not in Australia. Our national broadcaster, the ABC, hasn’t mentioned these protests at all, as far as I can tell. SBS, our other publicly-funded broadcaster, which specialises in World News, doesn’t seem to mention the Irish protests either.

But why? What aren’t the media covering this? Well, you probably already know. It’s the subject matter – Immigration.

You see, Ireland only has a relatively small population of around 5 million people. It doesn’t take too many extra people to put pressure on basic services and housing. Even the Guardian admit that housing is at a crisis level. Although, of course they point out that the housing crisis is being weaponised against refugees.

As expected, the Irish media are either downplaying, or labelling the protesters as far-right. “As the drumbeat of hate grows, how serious is the far-right threat to the State? A relatively small, but more emboldened far-right has made immigration and asylum a dominant issue in Ireland.” I don’t know, from the videos I’ve seen of the most recent protests, many of those marching are simply regular Irish folk.

Recent polling has shown that around 50% of Irish people want checkpoints on the border to limit the number of asylum seekers coming from the UK. 82% want immigrants arriving from the north of the island to be deported back to Britain. I don’t think this is just a small, far-right few. Just as the Irish voted overwhelmingly against messing with the constitution with regards to family and mothers and so on, I think they also are seriously against mass-immigration. The Australian media may ignore it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Even the BBC are reporting that dozens of tents have been erected along the Grand Canal in Dublin to house the ever-growing number of asylum seekers. This is a crisis, is it not? The Irish have a right to question this, don’t they?

Look, I’m not Irish. I can’t control what’s going on in Ireland. But one thing I do know, if the Irish are famous for one thing, it’s their fighting spirit. The Fighting Irish, as they say. The powers that be might think they can push the Irish around, but expect the Irish to push back.

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