Are you referring to the old Dublin saying that includes …..his fathers leg?

Nice one, Colum! :-)

Oops – Culm. Sorry!

Something to be very proud of indeed. Our maternity hospitals and their staff here are a credit to the nation.

With the possible exception of a team of doctors in Galway…

FG2016, Im guessing youre a Fine Gaeler? Youre praising medical staff yet its your government clowns who are going to crucify us in the budget.
Stop with the fake compliments please.

Come to south side of Chicago , tons of Irish imports, shops and restaurants here .. Little Ireland

I can see your point, but the raw statistics can be misleading.
My kids were born to a foreign national! Without even thinking about it, I know 20 more of the same.

I’d say the problem isn’t the percentage itself, but the Integration of the foreigners.
We should have Integration, not have ghettoed multiculturalism like Bradfords.

Are you actually trying to say that foreigners come to Ireland to have kids because of the children’s allowance? Are Irish people not entitled to it? Like someone pointed out, the statistics are misleading, most of those kids have one Irish parent so the kids are Irish and, regardless of where their parents are from, if they are born, raised and educated in Ireland, they are as Irish as anyone else so I really don’t see what you are getting at.

Ahhh yes Tina that’s a well know fact due to the last change we had to our constitution.
There’s the candidates who fly in the days just before the first Tuesday of the month have their friend collect then at the airport in their foreign registered cars.
Then it’s back on the plane Tuesday night wednesday morning with a merry so long suckers.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

They do that all for the sake of €140? How cheap are their flights?!?! It’s so easy to blame the foreigners for every problem. Obviously no Irish person would ever abuse the benefit system. I’m not saying that SOME foreigner nationals don’t do it but I doubt the problem is as big as you make it sound. I’ve heard of some foreigners who even have jobs and pay taxes.

140 per child remember and the flights are that cheap.
I came in from Barcelona Sunday 4th just after 2 flights from Europe got in, the disembarking passengers had no suit cases just a carryon bag.
The taxi driver I had pointed out all the foreign registered cars collecting, and they was a hell of a lot.
He was telling me all the same cars would be dropping off after they collected what they were due.
No one was doing anything illegal there was probable more wasted on the governments misinformation campaign during the children’s referendum but you have to ask where does it end.

you didn’t mind us foreigners when you came cap in hand to the EU to beg for funds for your decrepit infrastructure 15 years ago and now that you have pissed it all against the wall here you are waving the populist racist flag. Good job.

@Tim. how many Irish people have emigrated to countries all over the globe and you have the audacity to give out about people coming to live here!! Many of those ‘non nationals’ you speak of work here and pay taxes. I see you were getting some of your information from a taxi driver in Ireland. He didn’t start off his musings with “I’m not racist but………..” by any chance?  By the way I am Irish and I have ‘thumbs-downed’ you. I personally think its fantastic that Ireland has become more multicultural.

How ignorant. I came here as a foreigner 10 years ago, and have a 6 month old baby born here in Ireland. I didn’t come here for your welfare payouts, in fact, I don’t even claim child allowance. I have worked every single day for the past 10 years, paid my taxes like everyone else.
Don’t class us all the same. Some of us are actually here looking for a better life and a better future, not to out breed you and make Ireland less Irish, as you so eloquently put it.

My child was born Irish, to and Irish father, in an Irish hospital. She will go to an Irish school and learn like any other Irish child. How does that make her less Irish than your child?

Well said imogene.

@ Irene?
Its rare in this day and age to come in contact with someone who actually did come down in the last shower, bless your innocence Irene.
While you’re at it can you repeat a comment where I ‘’gave out’’.
I am merely telling what I seen and quoting facts from the CSO.
Your thumbs down broke my heart, my life will never be the same again.

Yeah I have to ask Tim, how was this taxi driver so sure that this was the case? Had he followed them and watched what they were doing? Had he spoken to them? Or had he made an assumption based upon guesswork?

Ok, foreign reg cars collecting other foreign people at the airport (thus avoiding taxi fares, which I’m sure he appreciated rather than begrudged – right?), was he sure that they were all the same people? Did he actually see the same *faces* being collected and dropped off? Could he be sure it was not business, families living between two countries due to their work, or any other perfectly reasonable reason..

Because just seeing foreign reg cars picking people up or dropping them off at the airport is hardly evidence of anything..

This is happening month in and month out that’s unless there’s a volcanic eruption that cancels flight to Ireland.
It’s not a fairy tale.
Time to wake up!

@ Imogene
Imogene please look over my comments.
I don’t have a problem with foreign nationals, as I already said there is nothing illegal with flying in claiming their benefits and flying back out till the next month.
I’m just telling it like it is and we can’t afford to keep doing it.

Perhaps the headline should have read “Women in Ireland”

They actually do that Tina. It’s a known fact. Everyone knows it. They fly in collect and leave. Have you honestly never heard this?

1) many of the marriages were probably between an Irish dad and a immigrant ( who could have been of Irish descent)
2) most of our immigrants are young – in child bearing age – so the 9% to 33% is misleading. We have no threat to our culture, we just will have a lot of polish-Irish kids dropping their th’s and supporting Celtic in our future.

Any since when do mothers produce children on their own ? My experience of biology tells me that it takes both a woman and a man to produce a child. So why only blame one sex ?

Where did you get any of that from this article. ? The average age of mothers is 31 , teenage pregnancies are the lowest since 1966 – if people were using Motherhood to make money they wouldn’t wait til the age of 31.

In short the article proves the exact opposite of what you claim. Those stats indicate that most births are to women who have worked and are probably college grads – who tend to have babies later. We need to up our stats in school

Ah Mary and Eoin – You’ll find on this site that ‘people’ like FG2016 have a tendency to hide behind an untraceable name and picture in order to make their unfounded blanket statements! Whether they are that stupid or rabble-rousing is any person’s guess – the best thing is to come up with a ridiculously sarcastic retort or just ignore them (generally I find the sarcasm far more entertaining!)

None.

Agree 100%.

Yeah, married couples should just stop having sex. You’ve had your two kids, no sex until menopause hits!

I’m guessing you’re also opposed to abortion, so you support a situation where couples who find they’re pregnant and can’t afford another child would be left desperate without any government support? Nice.

You obviously missed the comment I was replying to.
A person made the comment, was it possible that the high rate of pregnancy in Ireland was due to the high cost of the pill in Ireland.
The pill that costs pittance!
And don’t guess anything about me! You don’t even know me.
Idiot!

Oh, I see the part about the society’s financial drain hole has been clipped.

Anyway, the point was: We have a system whereby people can choose to not bother over making an effort, can have as many children as they want, free housing, free money, free healthcare and more paid for by the taxpayer, but in order for someone who is working to afford such things they’ve to make an awful lot of money, with each child costing an average of €200,000 to get from 0-18 alone.

There’s something very wrong with that system. Effort should be rewarded but in Ireland, it’s not.

FG – often with posts like this people tend to jump on them with the possible assumption that you’re saying to get rid off any welfare supports for everybody.

Can you propose an alternative to the current system that is comprehensive? Little point in saying something is wrong without a vision of how to fix it.

I understand your point, but the other side is that we don’t want children starving and without shoes etc.

That said, if the woman wants a family and a job, she (and her husband) are rightly screwed.
You could be paying 1000 a month on creche etc, and have no medical card so have to fork out a fortune everytime they go to the doctor.
In Sweden, the max one pays is 140 a month for creche per child.

So women, back to the kitchen with you if you want kids…

Millionare over 70s get a Medical Card, so why can’t under 5s get one?

@Tomy –

It’s a very tricky situation to deal with really. The question is how do we look after those who are genuinely in a rough spot, as many of our unemployed are, while sorting out those who’ve chosen our generous welfare system as a lifestyle instead of putting any effort in. We of course should be providing social scaffolding for those who had tried, ran into some bad luck and are trying to get their feet back on the ladder, but in doing so we’re giving people a massive opportunity to abuse the system we have.

On targeting the latter group, how can we tackle the parents without hurting the children?

It’s a very tough thing to approach. Over in the US, the answer is basically poverty? Out of luck? Tough, into poverty you go. I don’t want to see kids being put into that situation, despite their shoddy parents, but how do we isolate and essentially punish the parents for doing nothing?

I suppose one way would be to put in a new system while maintaining a legacy system for those on the current one. The new system could focus on taking the incentives out of choosing long term unemployment as a lifestyle.

The only problem with that is, if you had say a diminishing benefits system with no child support for new children, therefore stopping people taking the dole and having kids in theory, people would still go ahead and then blame society for putting them into that situation and demand more.

I think one of the first things that needs to be tackled is affordable childcare. That would take away the excuse a lot have for not working , a correct excuse at that as childcare is outrageously expensive, and then looking at stripping benefits if the parents don’t go out and work, now that they’ve somewhere they can put their kids while they do so.

I’m glad you acknowledged that the answer is not easy and that you seem to have a sense of balance around it. I’ll be honest, when I saw your earlier (deleted) post and read this one later it sounded like you were more interested in just switching off the tap and letting everyone dry out.

Tomy,

Not at all. There’s people who genuinely need welfare here, lots of them, and there’s people taking advantage of the provision of it and there’s lots of them too.

We as a society need to help the former and identify and sort out the latter as soon as possible, ESPECIALLY those who are low enough to beg a doctor to be certified as disabled to work and are therefore entitled to long term, essentially unquestioned, welfare.

We also need to be doing something for our self-employed and those who own their own businesses. We’re completely failing as a country to offer a safety net for those who want to take the initiative, start a business and create jobs.