Every time low-income people protest about important issues, we get labelled as “far-right”. To be blunt, this is an intimidation tactic so that vested interest groups can pocket public funds. But that’s another rant for another day.
During the lockdown, unemployment went past 30%. There was supposed to be a €60 billion covid recovery fund, but it did not provide jobs or housing for those in need, instead it mostly went into the pockets of wealthy landowners.
Again we are seeing billions of our public money, not going to help the public, to prop up hotels that are making billions off the suffering from the housing crisis. We are not protesting against the migrants, we’re protesting against the government repeatedly taking our resources away and giving them to large property owners.
Every second day there are ambulances and police coming to the old ESB building in East Wall. This is an unusual amount of activity for an area that normally waits for 4 hours for a native to receive an ambulance. Our resources are shrinking while our population is rapidly going. This is unsafe.
As a hefty man, I don’t particularly feel unsafe when I walk by an asylum centre. I do not have an irrational fear of “other people”. However, some local women are afraid to walk to the shops. Local officials need to do their jobs and coordinate with the locals so that East Wall can be safe.
The purpose of democracy is that citizens vocalise their issues and elect officials to act on them. This is not being done, and no longer can Ireland be considered a democracy.
Racism will probably always be a concern, forever. Luckily, Ireland isn't a racist country, and we do not have groups like the KKK or neo-nazis. We have a few fringe social media groups, but no “far-right” gangs patrolling the country.
We do, however, have thousands of residential units that do not accept ethnically Irish people. That to me is racist. It is absolutely racist that Irish people are the only people that cannot be housed. The department of social protection never returns my emails about housing and zero TDs in Dublin care about low-income people.
You might disagree with me on some points, and there are some facts that need to be checked. But what you can’t tell me is that these protests are racist. It's about the economy, stupid.
