A hope for 2024
What’s the true spirit of Christmas? Is it trying to forgive others, be welcoming and help out those less fortunate than us?
Is it giving other people refuge from bad situations? Joseph and Mary were said to have been given a place to sleep in a barn while they travelled - possibly unvetted.
When a hotel in Galway is burnt to the ground when we are in the midst of a housing crisis, it really shows what the people who burnt it down have a problem with.
It was rumoured that the Ross Lake Hotel in Rosscahill, Co. Galway was to be used to house 70 male international protection applicants so it was burnt down last weekend.
Gardaí have launched a major criminal investigation into the fire at the disused hotel.
Protesters had assembled to form a blockade at the entrance of the hotel last weekend to oppose plans to house the asylum seekers on the premises from Thursday.
Commissioner Drew Harris described the attack as shocking.
Those opposing Ireland hosting asylum seekers often mention how we should house ‘our own’ first.
Homeless people could have been accommodated in that hotel too but some people preferred to burn it down.
At least An Taoiseach spoke this week about widely repeated claims that asylum seekers coming to Ireland are ‘unvetted male migrants’.
On Monday, he said: “I think we should have an open and honest debate about migration in this country but it has to be based on facts. It has to be based on information.
“It has to avoid anything that is othering or racist. They have to be the parameters.
“I am concerned about a huge degree of misinformation. I hear, for example, people talking about asylum seekers being unvetted.
“Everybody who comes into the country who claims international protection is photographed, is fingerprinted, is checked against a watchlist.
“At least until such a time as we can process their application and decide whether they're allowed to stay or not, they should be treated with a minimum degree of dignity and respect. That's what we seek to do. That's what I'd ask people to do.”
Mr Varadkar added that Ireland has a “rules-based system of migration”.
This week An Tánaiste Micheál Martin said the Government needs to create a better narrative around communicating the issue of migration. And perhaps that is what the Taoiseach was doing.
There are fears around the arrival of migrants, and especially around ‘unvetted males’ and the Government needs to do a much better job of countering those narratives.
Let’s hope 2024 is the year that the lies spread by the far-right around immigration are rolled back. In a country that has a lengthy history of economic migration, it’s the least we can do.