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TÁNAISTE SIMON HARRIS has said it was a “dog whistle” for those in the Social Democrats to compare him to Nigel Farage.
During Leaders’ Questions, the comments made by Harris on migration were raised again by Social Democrats TD Cian O’Callaghan, who emphasised the importance of leadership not “inflaming” the debate on migration.
Harris described comments made by Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon, whereby he said Harris is trying to “go down the Nigel Farage route”, were “disappointing”.
The Social Democrats party leader Holly Cairns also said this week that Harris’ comments on migration of late were straight out of the “Farage playbook”.
“People from other political parties immediately, just call me names for stating a fact, in my view, that migration has risen at too high a rate,” said Harris.
He said “extremes in politics” fester when politicians don’t openly discuss topics such as immigration.
The dictionary meaning for ‘dog whistle’ is a coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others.
Last week comments made by Harris on migration were labelled as ‘reckless dog whistling’ by opposition politicians - but today the Tánaiste insisted Ireland needs a debate on migration and a national migration policy.
“Words matter. Your words matter. Where misinformation is spread. We must challenge it. Where there are attempts to sow hate and division. We must build cohesion. Tánaiste leadership means bringing calm to a debate, not inflaming it,” O’Callaghan told the Dáil.
Harris condemned the attack at the Drogheda Ipas centre, but said it has “nothing to do” with a debate on migration.
He acknowledged the benefits of migration but said an “evidence based debate” is needed on migration and a migration policy must be put in place with rules applied.
“We need to have a mature discussion about what is an appropriate level of migration,” he added.
“This isn’t a radical concept. This is something that happens in most mature democracies, in most European countries. We’re late to this because migration numbers have only become a larger issue in terms of public debate in recent years.”
He said that the government plan on producing a national migration strategy in 2o26 and bring forward new legislation relating to international protection to address issues such as the high number of asylum applications which are refused.
He said the government also intends to produce a national migration strategy to have an “evidence based, data driven, informed discussion” on the topic.
O’Callaghan asked the Tánaiste to outline what sectors he will target in terms of getting the numbers down, stating:
“You said that migration outside of the number of international protection applicants is too high. What I’d like to know is, what sectors will you be targeting to reduce the number of migrant workers?”
“Will you be targeting multinationals, pharmaceutical and tech companies? You know well that these sectors provide a huge amount of employment and taxation that funds our public services. Will you be targeting the health and care sectors? As you know, if it wasn’t for migrants working as doctors and nurses and carers, these services would crumble?”
Harris told O’Callaghan:
“It is just a statement of fact that our population has grown at a very, very fast rate.
“It is a statement of fact that for every 10,000 people that come into our country, roughly 3,000 more homes are needed.
“I believe that we need to actually look at migration in the round, and we need to plan for it -, and we need to have a mature discussion about what is an appropriate level of migration.”
The Fine Gael leader said this would involve analysing workforce needs “sector by sector”.
Holding up a graph in the Dáil, Harris said his view that migration had risen too high was supported by data from Eurostat.
He said the chart showed that Ireland’s population in terms of net migration had risen “way faster” than the European average.
Harris also endorsed a suggestion by Independent TD Paul Gogarty to hold a Citizens Assembly on migration. He said the idea was a “sensible suggestion” and said he will consider it.
With reporting by Press Association
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