"Strange times in the Irish Republic. The boom years have been on for 20-odd years now, the country's becoming much more secular, immigration and asylum levels are high, the youth/dance/drug culture is widespread - it's starting to feel much more like degenerate, decadent England."In fact, given their smallish population, immigration is massive - and it's pretty much all been in the last ten years. According to the BBC, one in seven - about 14% - of the Republic's population - were born abroad - the sort of demographic shift that took thirty-five years in the UK crammed into ten.
Ironic really. Traditionally all the problems of Ireland have been seen as the fault of the perfidious English. Murderous republicans have killed English toddlers in Warrington or Pakistani shopkeepers at Canary Wharf, but have avoided blowing up Dundee or Wrexham. Only in the North have they been happy to slaughter people of Scots descent whose forebears emigrated to Ulster 400 years back - and who, ironically, were of Ulster stock.
So while Sinn Fein pledge a rebel's stand against "England's sons with their long-barreled guns", the country is filling up behind them. If one in seven of the Republic's residents were English you can be sure that the petrol bombs now burning Orange halls across the North would be toasting the joists of English-owned homes in the South. Instead Sinn Fein call for immigrants to be welcomed "with open arms" - on the grounds that the nasty Brits gave us such a hard time when we went over there, and we don't want to be like them, do we ?
Some people in Ireland aren't completely happy about what's happening.
Hibernia Girl is one. She's your one-stop shop for all Irish immigration-related news. Very much worth watching, as the changes really are massive. I don't think Ireland yet has the UK's demographic disaster as well - as far as I know they're still having babies - but I'd be grateful if she'd keep an eye on that, too.
She also nominated me as an "Excellent blog", so thanks muchly.
(It's still ironic though. Even on HGs site there are plenty of commenters who think England's the big problem. As they say at the panto "Behind you !")
7 comments:
Since no Irishman is ever responsible for anything, we can safely conclude that it's all the fault of some foreign plot, probably instigated by the English/British.
Laban: I don't think Ireland yet has the UK's demographic disaster as well - as far as I know they're still having babies - but I'd be grateful if she'd keep an eye on that, too.
I'm no population expert, but from the way I see it, the Irish are still having babies like you say, so we are not being "outbred" -- at least not yet.
A reader on my blog the other day tried to argue that we needed lots of immigrants because we have an aging population. That the populations of other parts of Europe is aging may be true, but it doesn't appear to be the case for Ireland ("Who's having babies?"). As I replied to that reader:
The ethnic Irish under the age of 15 in this country amounts to 751,771 individuals -- a full 21% of the ethnic Irish population (see the first graph in this post). In other words, more than 1 in 5 of every ethnic Irish person is under 15.
We absolutely will not have a shortage of people to look after us and keep the country going when we get old.
Certainly some immigrant groups appear to really be "having babies"! -- although their populations are still relatively small at the moment.
With continued mass immigration, though, the population scales could no doubt be tipped.
Laban: (It's still ironic though. Even on HGs site there are plenty of commenters who think England's the big problem. As they say at the panto "Behind you !")
Old habits -- and ideas -- die hard, unfortunately. :-/
I am not convinced that we "need immigrants to care to care for the ageing population in the UK, either. I am 59 and have been made "voluntarily" redundant (the choice of verb and the use of scare quotes is deliberate), my former job having been outsourced to "equally capable" chaps in the Subcontinent. I can draw a company pension in 2 months' time when I reach 60 and need not work again. And yet I am fit and both capable of and willing to do work of the less strenuous variety and, with luck, might remain so for the next decade or even longer. When and if I do become infirm and/or doolally my "carers" will doubtless be people who do not speak my language, do not share my culture and in all probability despise me into the bargain.
We are living longer and we are living healthier -- many people of my age in my father's and grandfather's generations were tentatively eying death's door and that -- and we baby boomers do undoubtedly represent a blip in the population pyramid which needs to be addressed. But not by importing the temporary solution of mass immigration, which then becomes a permanent problem.
...and grandfather's generations were tentatively eying death's door and that -- and we baby boomers do undoubtedly...
...and grandfather's generations were tentatively eyeing death's door -- and we baby boomers do undoubtedly...
(Sigh!)
Edwin - I've posted a few times on what might happen when the (overwhelmingly native) elderly population are being cared for by non-natives. Apparently its very important that a police force reflect the "clients", yet not so a medical force.
See 'the NHS, the Met, and race targets'
Edwin Greenwood:
"When and if I do become infirm and/or doolally my "carers" will doubtless be people who do not speak my language, do not share my culture and in all probability despise me into the bargain."
"Doolally" is an interesting word. Doolally was (is?) a town near Bombay (or as the Beeb would say Mumbai) where the mentally exhausted Brits were sent during the period of the Raj.
This government is hellbent on sending the indigenes "doolally" with their social engineering. Just a thought.
FWIW, UK birthrate is 10.7/1000 people and Ireland is 14.4/1000 people. However, that works out as 1.8 children per woman in the UK (up from 1.6 in 2001) and 1.9 in Ireland (down from 2.1 in 2001, presumably due to differing relative numbers of children and old people in the two countries.
The British are the largest majority in Ireland, however - even if you assume that all the Catholic Brits there are Irish really...
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