McDowell Twat or Genius.

So the immigration debate has reared it’s head again in Ireland. With Enda Kenny thinking he is TD for Tennessee (all be it a Celtic Tennessee) and McDowell being and it pains me to say this, an utter twat.

With Enda going into right wing land it seems that McDowell wants to claim back some of this back. McDowell seems to finally believing what the media say about the PD’s and feels the need to take a step to the right. With a ridiculous kite. Now as a friends of mine said on the issue of detention centres for asylum seekers. “Aside from the grievous breach of the basic human right to liberty they ain’t a bad idea”. The thing is while my friend was speaking in jest there are people who might think it is a good idea.

First off it is a grave breach of right to liberty. In this country you only lose your liberty if you are guilty of a crime, making and asylum application is not against the law. Making a bogus one is probably but we also have a guilty until proven innocent thingy as well.

So do they work? Remember being Ireland the wait times for processing application are going to be long. So we are not talking about keeping people in these places over a weekend. We are talking months and years here. Also these detention centres will cost millions to run. Also how will you intergrate someone in to a society you have utterly alienated by locking them up. And instread of them working and paying taxes you have them costing millions. The average cost of keeping a prisoner in jail is about €60,000 now we get roughly 3,000 asylum applications a year. Leading to a cost of €180,000,000 per year if we consider having the same security arrangements as prisons. However McDowell has said that these detention centres will not be of the barbed wire type.

What kind of ridicules thing is that then? If it does not have fences then it is just accommodation that we do already. Either you let people leave or you stop them leaving. It is either a detention centre or flats. And if you want to stop some one leaving you basically need to have fences and security.

But is McDowell being clever? He is letting Fine Gael dictate to him what to say. By trying to out right them. He seems to forget that traditionally anti-immigrant vote tends to come from the people at the bottom competing with immigrants for the menial jobs. The same people that don’t vote PD. However one thing his comments are doing is taking the flack from the liberal wing of Labour and the greens. This liberal wing which would have, and probably have got seriously pissed at Enda Kenny for his seeming lurch to the right. Indeed if the pissed off wing were continually pissed off. Then perhaps they would be much more in favour of joining with Fianna Fail then they currently are. And where does that leave McDowell? In opposition. He knows Fianna Fail is looking in the direction of Labour and Greens. The Harney and McDowell have hurt the governments image. And the supposed caring face of Labour and Greens would not go down bad with the lefter leaners in Fianna Fail. Thus for McDowell to stand any chance of being in the next government he needs Labour, Fine Gael and indeed the Greens to stick together. To deny Fianna Fail, the labour and green option. So maybe this exercise in kite flying is not about trying to get anti-immigrant votes. But in fact it is in an attempt to protect Fine Gael from Labour and the Greens by taking the flack, and thus keep Labour and Greens away from Fianna Fail. And the PD’s in power.