Aoife Moore is an award-winning journalist from Derry and author of The Long Game: Inside Sinn Féin.
Ireland is in something of an identity crisis. The land of céad míle fáilte is currently trying to decide if we can reduce “céad míle” to something that will make some people feel better, despite almost all of their problems not being tied to immigration.
The presidential election, won in a landslide by Catherine Connolly, laid bare the lack of understanding Fine Gael has of the Irish people.
Heather Humphreys, a more than capable politician, was a bad candidate, managed poorly by a team who made her campaign about Connolly (whose campaign I assisted) rather than Humphreys herself.
This is something anyone who studied previous elections, or had a notion about the Irish people, would know doesn’t wash with the public.
Likewise, a huge proportion of people spoiled their vote. Some marked their cards with racist sentiments or far-right slogans. Many more lambasted the selection process.
In the days afterwards, Simon Harris, leader of Fine Gael, felt the need to comment on immigration: “Our migration numbers are too high, and I think that is really an issue that needs to be considered in a very serious way by government.”
He added: “I think we have to be honest, we have to listen to the people of this country, who I believe are saying to us we used to live in a country where 2,000 to 3,000 people sought international protection each year. That number has gone to in or around 20,000; that is a very, very significant increase, and it is too high.”
This statement is false. The September report on the International Protection System by the Department of Justice said that compared to last year, the number of asylum applications so far during 2025 “has dropped significantly”.
The total number of applications had dropped to 9,589 from 15,583 during the same period last year, a reduction of 38.5%.
A regular politician may be forgiven for getting this wrong, but Simon Harris is the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
This statement was made after days of rioting outside CityWest IPAS centre following an alleged sexual assault on a child.
Days later, children as young as 20 days old had to be rescued from a fire gardaí believe was deliberately started in an IPAS centre in Drogheda.
Harris felt no need to release a statement that weekend about the fire and the children it almost killed. He did have time, however, to create and advertise a new Snapchat account.
The most galling thing about his words isn’t even that they were patently false, it’s the tone in which he discusses immigration, as if his party haven’t been in government for over a decade.
Simon Harris himself has been a cabinet minister since 2016. His party colleague and friend Helen McEntee was the minister in charge of immigration for years. He sits in cabinet with the current minister, Jim O’Callaghan.
If the immigration system isn’t working, whose fault is that?
It’s obvious what’s happened here. Simon Harris, as the leader of Fine Gael, is feeling the heat. The party have been on a downward run for a while, an Irish Times poll on April 17 putting it at a 30-year low of 16%.
The presidential race was a shambles and exposed the feeling of public disillusion with the civil war parties.
Now, with the pressure piling on, Harris has turned further right and focussed on the most vulnerable people in Ireland.
If one wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, one Dáil exchange in the last few weeks laid it bare.
Social Democrat Cian O’Callaghan took Harris to task on his immigration statements.
Harris replied that there was a “need to have an evidence-based debate”, notwithstanding the evidence he had previously submitted was incorrect and that O’Callaghan asking a question in the Dáil is asking for a debate.
This is why people switch off from politics, because phrases like “this must be viewed in the round” or “we need a mature debate” don’t actually mean anything. They’re a time-saving exercise from people who can’t stand over what they’ve said.
The fact is, reported crime is down in the Republic, homelessness is up.
Harris’s own government say that the housing crisis won’t end until 2040.
The number of children actively waiting on spinal surgery lists increased last month, in line with a national rise in surgery queues for all patients.
None of this has anything to do with immigration but failing government policies. A Fine Gael government who have had over a decade to fix it, with Harris at the centre since 2016.
One must always beware of politicians punching down on the most vulnerable, because it usually means they’ve run out of steam or ideas to help anyone else.
