Head over to our T
Libertas’ Raymond O Malley Talks about the ‘Tide’ of Immigration
Read more about: Ireland, Leinster 
At Today FM’s The Last Word in Naas today, Libertas’ candidate Raymond O Malley seemed to take a leaf out of the Euro-right playbook, talking up immigration and the ‘tide’ of immigration from Eastern Europe.
His quotes are below the fold andthe audio is just below. Have a look at them, they are pulled from the press release. It does seem like he got caught in a moment and couldn’t stop himself. It does chime with the innuendo in their literature take a look.
[display_podcast]
“ I think a lot of people are very concerned too about the problem of immigration. While we’ve massive unemployment in this country, over the last five years we’ve had five hundred thousand people come in to this country; there has been a funnel effect because Ireland was one of only three EU countries that allowed the accession states to have free access to our labour market”
Asked by Cooper if he believes that was the wrong thing to do, the Ireland East Libertas candidate replied:
“It was grand then but the problem is we’re now in a situation where we’ve massive unemployment, its getting worse and its unfair to immigrants and its unfair to Irish people..you’ve got to stop the tide coming…In the last three months we’ve also given out another nine thousand PPS numbers..I think we’ve got to stop it because we have to look after our own people….The other 24 European Countries have got a seven year moratorium on taking workers from the accession states”
When asked by Cooper whether it is now Libertas policy to put up the country’s barriers, preventing anymore workers from the ten accession states from entering Ireland, O’Malley answered:
“Well I think as long as we have this rate of unemployment, Yes”
Fair play to Raymond O’Malley and Libertas. It is about time a political party started to articulate what so many people on the street are thinking and saying.
The economy is sinking, Irish men and women are loosing their jobs in their hundreds of thousands and yet the Irish govt, led by FF – the mass immigration party – are still letting in thousands of new EU nationals and many bogus asylum seekers to milk this country dry.
I will now vote for Libertas for what they have said on this issue.
“Fair play to Raymond O’Malley and Libertas. It is about time a political party started to articulate what so many people on the street are thinking and saying.”
The problem is that what many people on the street think and say is ill-informed rubbish tinged by racism. Now what O’Malley has said is not racist in itself, but it tends to play to those who have views that we could describe as racist. Politicians should avoid talking about such issues in radio soundbytes.
O’Malley argues that we should prevent workers from the ten accession states from entering Ireland, but is there any evidence to suggest that people from these countries are continuing to move to Ireland in large numbers? He mentions that 9000 new PPS numbers have been given out over the past three months, but how many of those are given to people from outside the EU? How many have been given to people on student visas? Most importantly, how many people have left the country? And besides, what is the point of somebody who is running for the EP making these kind of statements? It makes all the sense of Declan Ganley callling for the retension of cancer services in Sligo. If these kind of issues were important to Libertas, they’d have candidates running for the Dail. I’m sick of Libertas candidates telling us what they’d do about issue x, when its one that the EP has no powers on, and which you’d imagine Libertas would want to retain Dail control over.
Yes, Raymond O’Malley is a well respected farmer from Co Louth who led irish farmers through the foot and mouth disease episode. He is highly respected by those who know him.
He is not a racist in any way at all. What he is is a realist.
The facts are simple, we have had half a million economic migrants from Eastern EUrope since 2004.
We currently have almost 400,000 unemployed, yet the state gave out 29,000 new pps numbers to accession state nationals since this January. Check out the welfare site.
It is common sense, though not among media pundits, to do something about it.
Either this country wins a multi- billion lotto, or we need to restrict number of immigrants coming to seek work as Irish men and women become unemployed. ‘We have to look after our own first.’
I agree.
He is copletly right. There is feck all jobs left for the irish and then other foreign nationals are on the dole. I hate the way people call it racist, its common bloody sense. If the foreigners werent here there would be more jobs for the people of this country.
This guy should be locked in a mental hospital for life for talking rubbish. The foreigners have nothing to do with an economy crisis at all. I find it arrogant that they are blamed for economic failures and nobody wants to remember that they were doing odd jobs when thousands of lazy Irish slyboots where claiming the dole. This country is a recipe for disaster. I’ve been living here for the past 5 years observing very closely the society and the political scene and must say that mentally it’s the most retarded country in Western Europe. This is not a coincidence that it’s located on the outskirts of Europe. It has never played any significant role in the history of Europe and the good times and the recent economy boom is owned solely to the EU membership and a great slice of luck, and timing. There is no proper industry, workers are very lowly skilled with no big desire to dedicate themselves to honest work. Also, the basic knowledge of an Irish citizen about the outside world is equal to zero. People are encouraged to buy Irish food which is so awful that most people in Europe wouldn’t dare to feed a cat or a dog with it.
If you want to criticise you need to start from yourself.
Raymond O’ Malley has made a very valid and crucial point in relation to immigration in Ireland. Although the foreign nationals are not to blame…. the governments decision to allow so many of them into Ireland is. It is foolish not to accept the fact that handing out jobs and benefits to foreign nationals at a time when the country is in dire straits is a disaster. Thousands of Irish people are out of the jobs they have had for years, meaning thousands of Irish families are suffering severe fianancial strain and because there are so many people on the dole nowdays ( a large number immigrants ) this is been made more difficult for our people.
We all know that when Ireland was doing well, foreign nationals were employed in jobs for cheaper wages therefore leaving many Irish people finding it difficult to get jobs. Money was been sent back to their own countries so they were not contributing back to Ireland in any way.
Libertas will be getting my vote.
It is time to use the logic thats been handed to us on a plate to now act on living in a country we can be proud of and a government that will act on the NEEDS of Ireland and the Irish people for a change. After all our present government is not.
Having been told 3 year olds would be taken from their parents by Libertas during their Lisbon referendum campaign and having followed it up with lots of other lies, anything they say has to be questioned and checked. Apart from the fact that if today you condone discrimination against somebody, who knows when it might be your turn so even if your not very moral, you need to be careful even for selfish reasons. But just to put the record straight. All EU countries with the exception of Germany and Austria have opened their doors to workers from the 8 eastern and central European countries that were admitted in 2004 now. Ireland, Britain and Sweden were the first to do so and benefited hugely as expert reports show. Ireland had the lowest number as a percentage of our workforce of immigrants from these countries before 2004 and this peaked in 2006 at 5%. At the same time we shut or curtailed considerably giving work permits to any other nationalities. The influx of well educated Poles, Latvians etc plugged the severe skills shortage existing in the Celtic Tiger and helped the economy to grow. And by the way – Ireland has the second highest number of people living in other EU member states. Shutting Europe’s borders as Libertas has suggested removes one of the basic principles the Union is founded on – but I suppose Libertas foreign advisers would not be aware of that. And apparently it’s silly members are not either.
Irish families are suffering severe financial strain because they know nothing about the economy which has cycles, there are good and bad times, and if buy two houses, 4 cars all funded by bank loans, you overspend on expensive holidays, and waste money on partying every week, you can only blame yourself when you can’t afford to pay it back. If you live above the level you can afford the bad consuqences will hit you sooner or later.
Iy you are an UE member you have to respect its rules. The benefits are a part of UE legislation and this is not a time to whine but to act.