Petrol bombs and political dog whistles

There's a particular grimness to discovering that Ireland has developed its own strain of far-right extremism. Small groups have emerged, adopting the trappings of Irish republicanism - the manifestos, the hierarchies, the oaths of allegiance, even plans to drape themselves in the Tricolour. The irony would be almost comedic if it weren't so sinister: appropriating the symbols of Irish struggle while targeting the very people who care for elderly Irish citizens in nursing homes.

What's notable about some of these groups is their operational discipline. Unlike the usual keyboard warriors who broadcast their every grievance online, certain cells have maintained virtually no digital footprint, suggesting a level of organisation that security services are taking extremely seriously.

The counterpoint remains stark: at the very moment immigrant care workers were being celebrated at awards ceremonies in Dublin for their dedication to Irish elderly citizens, acts of violence were being directed at asylum accommodation elsewhere in the country. While Filipino, Indian and Spanish workers spoke movingly about their pride in caring for those who built Ireland, others were attempting to drive those same communities out through intimidation and arson.

The contrast tells you everything about where we've arrived as a nation.

But there's an uncomfortable truth that tends to get lost between the celebrating and the firebombing: a great many ordinary Irish people, who wouldn't dream of lighting a match in anger, are genuinely worried about what's happening in our country. And dismissing those concerns as mere bigotry wrapped in respectability is precisely how you get ten deluded men in a minibus planning domestic terrorism.

Ireland took in over 21,000 asylum applications in a recent 12-month period. For a country of five million, that's not a rounding error. It's equivalent to Denmark's 2015 crisis, which sent that country careening from Scandinavian openness to something approaching a fortress mentality. Communities across Ireland have seen the emergence of accommodation centres with minimal consultation and inadequate infrastructure to support them. Housing lists that were already biblically long got longer, while school places that were already scarce became scarcer. These aren't imaginary problems conjured by conspiracy theorists but real pressures on existing systems that were creaking before anyone mentioned immigration.

The question isn't whether these concerns exist; the question is whether they are valid. They are. The question is how a mature democracy addresses them without either surrendering to the mob or pretending the mob has no legitimate grievances whatsoever.

Denmark serves as an instructive example here, though the lesson is more complex than simply condemning or emulating it.

Denmark was, until recently, the poster child for Scandinavian openness. Then 2015 happened, and everything changed. The country looked around, discovered ethnic enclaves with unemployment rates that would make inner-city Dublin blush, and promptly declared war on immigration with the zeal of a convert denouncing their former faith. Advertisements in Lebanese newspapers. Plans to ship refugees to Rwanda. Mandatory integration measures. The stated aim was "zero asylum seekers".

Denmark is notable not just for the unprecedented severity of the response but also for the Machiavellian political mechanics of its governing parties. The right-wing Danish People's Party had gained considerable ground, a rise unthinkable a decade earlier, but instead of opposing this movement on principle, the mainstream parties - including the centre-left Social Democrats - adopted the platform wholesale. They outflanked the more radical right by becoming them and the Danish People's Party's vote share subsequently collapsed in a whimper.

We may call it cynical opportunism or shrewd politics - the interpretation depends largely on your stomach for democratic realities. Denmark's politicians looked at what voters were actually thinking and made a calculation: pretending the problem didn't exist wasn't going to cut it. Neither was wagging fingers at people for having the wrong sort of concerns. So they didn't. They chose to govern according to what voters actually wanted, not what progressive elements and a strident Brussels thought they should want. The welfare state they'd built depended on social cohesion and broad public support. Uncontrolled immigration threatened both. So they controlled immigration.

Whether this was wise or monstrous depends mainly on where you sit. But it unquestionably defused a political crisis that was threatening to put a more radical party into power.

Which brings us back to Ireland and Simon Harris announcing that there were "too many migrants" - a statement that sent half the country nodding in relief and the other half reaching for their fainting couches.

Harris had probably seen the political writing on the Dáil walls and realised the odds were against him, politically and arithmetically. Ireland's creaking infrastructure, which includes housing, health, and education,  can barely cope with the people already dependent on their services.

Continually piling on additional demand without expanding capacity is not a compassionate policy, it's blinkered thinking masquerading as competence. You can be pro-immigration and still acknowledge that absorbing large numbers of people requires planning, resources, and crucially, public consent.

The failure of Irish governments, successive ones across multiple parties, has been in trying to maintain an effectively open borders policy without building the infrastructure to support it or preparing the public for the change. They've treated mass immigration as something that just happens, like weather, rather than a policy choice requiring democratic legitimacy. Then they act shocked when people get angry.

The danger - and it's a real one - is that acknowledging public concern can slide into validating more extreme viewpoints. There's a difference between saying "we need to manage immigration better" and "too many migrants", though Harris probably doesn't appreciate the distinction. The former is policy. The latter is rhetoric that the men with petrol bombs hear as vindication.

Ciarán O'Connor at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue warns that politicians must be careful with their language. They have agenda-setting power. Careless remarks about migration can inflame sentiment that manifests in violence. This is true. But it's equally valid that refusing to acknowledge genuine concerns - dismissing everyone worried about immigration as racist or thick –- creates the very resentment that more extremist elements exploit.

The cruel paradox is that Ireland desperately needs qualified immigrants as our many nursing homes are staffed by carers from the Philippines, Spain, and India while our healthcare system relies heavily on doctors and nurses from around the world. That unsuspecting Indian care worker at the Mansion House, speaking about the pride of looking after those who built Ireland, wasn't just being sentimental; he was describing our economic reality.

But processing immigrants possessed of necessary skills and identification in an orderly fashion and managing undocumented immigration effectively are two different things. You can support continued immigration while questioning the pace and the mechanisms and you can welcome newcomers while encouraging them to integrate into Irish society rather than forming parallel communities. You can be pro-refugee without pretending that every asylum application is equally valid or ignoring the reality that the system is being exploited.

It may be anti-EU but Denmark's model offers one path by acknowledging public anxiety, implementing strict controls, and calmly watch as the opposition deflates. The uncalculated cost is that you become the thing you were trying to prevent, just with better table manners. But the alternative is to court disaster - ignoring legitimate concerns while hoping extremism doesn't take root hasn't exactly covered itself in glory either.

Extremism in Ireland might be contained at the moment, but the conditions that produced it remain. Young men don't join terrorist cells because everything's going swimmingly. They join because they're angry, frightened, and convinced that nobody in authority gives a damn about their concerns. Sometimes they're right about that last part, even if their response is monstrous.

Ireland needs a conversation about immigration that doesn't begin and end with either "borders are racist" or "Ireland for the Irish". Perhaps we need to discuss numbers, integration, infrastructure, and cultural change honestly. That means acknowledging that rapid demographic transformation is unsettling for many people, not because they're bigots but because humans are generally suspicious of rapid change. It also means distinguishing firmly between those seeking reasonable policy adjustments and those plotting arson.

The Danish approach may have worked, to some extent. The more extremist elements lost their purchase. Denmark recognised its native population as meriting priority but perhaps lost some of its liberality in the process. The question for Ireland is whether we can find a third way: addressing genuine concerns about immigration while refusing to surrender either our compassion or our common sense. It's a narrow path between capitulation and catastrophe.

So far, we're not walking it particularly well.