There were two stories about immigration matters this week that go some way to explaining one of the more remarkable – and yet unremarked upon – stories in Irish politics over the last 12 months: how immigration fizzled out as an issue.
Firstly, the State’s human rights watchdog warned the Government that it has significant concerns about legislation, due to be tabled in the Dáil in the autumn, to implement the EU’s migration pact.
In an analysis of the general scheme (or “heads” – a summary of what the bill intends to do) of the International Protection Bill 2025 released on Tuesday, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) says that a tougher new asylum system may fail to protect and vindicate the human rights of asylum seekers. It also says the new system could end up being bogged down in the courts. That, I have no difficulty in believing.
The second story reported that Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan briefed the Cabinet Committee on Immigration that there has been a large fall-off in the numbers seeking asylum here in the first half of the year.
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O’Callaghan revealed that there has been a 43 per cent drop in the number of international protection applications in the first six months of 2025 compared to the first six months of 2024.
For some people, the dramatic decline in numbers will be seen as evidence that Ireland has become less welcoming to asylum seekers, less likely to offer shelter and sanctuary to those who say they need it. And that is something that many people will regret. Certainly, it will not be welcomed by the human rights commission.
But for the Government, this is exactly what it wanted.
Cast your mind back to the first half of last year when immigration was the hot button political issue. The numbers of those coming to Ireland seeking asylum had rocketed since the end of the pandemic and were continuing to increase. The Irish system was becoming overwhelmed. It ran out of places to accommodate asylum seekers. A tent city sprang up around the Mount Street headquarters of the asylum service.
Clearing the tents – and sending the asylum seekers elsewhere – was one of the first moves by Simon Harris when he became Taoiseach last year. It didn’t solve the problem of the lack of accommodation, of course. But it certainly made it less visible.
In parallel, the Government made several moves to ease pressure on the asylum service by dissuading people from coming here – principally by telling them before they arrived that there was no accommodation for them – and by increasing its efficiency. More staff were allocated, more countries were designated as “safe”, processing times were cut and deportations – largely symbolic, but important – returned. Gradually, the political temperature of the immigration issue began to ease.
In the Department of Justice, Jim O’Callaghan has continued the policy of the last government with, if anything, more vigour. He is developing a new migration and integration strategy. In a speech at the Institute of International and European Affairs on Wednesday, he summed up the more robust approach that is now the Government’s modus operandi: “The right to apply for asylum does not and cannot equate to a right to asylum. If you are genuinely in fear of persecution, Ireland is here for you. We will process your application quickly, and we will give you every help that we can to integrate into our society.”
But then he added: “If you are not in fear of persecution but wish for a better life for yourself and your family, that is also legitimate, but our asylum laws are not here for your use. They are there to protect the persecuted. The work visa laws are there to enable people to seek an economically better life here. It is not legitimate to claim that you require international protection when you do not. It is unfair on the people who do.”
I suspect this is an approach that will chime with a lot of people: repeated polls have found that the public favours tougher immigration policies. And so Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – would you believe? – have given people what they want.
Publishing a white paper on migration in 2021, the former Minister for Integration Roderic O’Gorman once tweeted in eight languages – including Arabic, Georgian, Albanian, Somali and Urdu – that the Government would end the system of direct provision as part of improvements to the asylum system.
To be fair to O’Gorman, that was a laudable goal, even if he was about to be mugged by reality. In the post-pandemic world, with millions of refugees on the move in search of safety and a better life, it was something for which Ireland was unprepared. Another lesson that the world is as it is, rather than as we would like it. O’Callaghan has yet to tweet in Urdu.
There are two perhaps uncomfortable truths which underlie the national and European response to migration, and the politics it can ignite.
The first is that the entire system of international protection, where countries are legally pledged to offer asylum to people fleeing political persecution, war or extreme danger, is based on the presumption that the numbers arriving in any given country will be manageable, both logistically and politically.
The second is that the last 10 years of politics in Europe suggest, I am afraid, that in most – if not all – European countries, there is not public assent for the arrival of large numbers of migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
And so European politicians have realised that they can deal with this by reducing migration levels – or their voters will elect somebody who will. I suspect that Ireland is no different.
