IPASssss

On 16 December last, it was announced that an International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) building project on 11 acres at Lissywollen in Athlone had been cancelled by the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth Roderic O'Gorman. This happened six days after the first 92 residents had moved in. The development is now officially ''unauthorised'', but it is still there. Around a thousand men were to be housed in mostly tented accommodation at the site, which was being thrown together quickly following the ministerial order which bypassed compliance with An Bord Pleanala and EU laws.

The legality of the development was challenged by the five Athlone-based county councillors - John Dolan of Fine Gael, Frankie Keena and Aonghus O'Rourke of Fianna Fail, and by Paul Hogan and Boxer Moran of relatively independent persuasions. The five men nominated Hogan to take a High Court case against the Minister. 

Hogan and the other councillors had been quick off the mark in opposing the plan in October, citing a 1948 law (see below) which led to the Athlone-Moate Municipal District issuing a prohibition order on the project, an order which would quickly be quashed by the Minister - legally or otherwise. Hogan's legal team went to war over environmental impacts, wastewater and traffic issues. The people of Athlone rallied behind the brave councillors and their lawyers, donating lots of money to the cause. And the out of touch Green Minister was forced to throw in the towel when faced with the enormity of the fight that faced him ........ well, it's a story.

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There is a lot of money in this game. O'Gorman (an ex-law lecturer at DCU) and his seven advisers cost the taxpayer around E1.2 million per annum. The Athlone development reportedly cost around the same to build, and probably not much less to dismantle - if that happens. The migration business has rapidly expanded in recent years, with the State spending E1.43 billion on accommodation in the first nine months of 2024 for asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees. The eight figure sums going to relatively small hotel groups are surely deserving of investigation. It seems that the situation can only be handled in terms of a rolling crisis, with the Department of Integration stating, ''Despite expanding our system by over 20,000 beds in the last 2 years, nearly 3,000 international protection applicants have not been offered accommodation in 2024''.

The protests in Athlone dried up just before Christmas and there was great general relief when it was announced that the Minister was conceding the court case and the development would be classified as unauthorised. Meanwhile, the Department of Integration went ahead with plans to move in another 93 men. There is no reason why, with a little tweaking, the original government plan cannot be reclassified as authorised. 

The case itself is basically a reheating of Dublin's Thornton Hall case, with the same legal team. The councillors have never offered an explanation as to why they did not give the job to a local solicitor. Concentrating on what are essentially planning issues means that the fundamental issues concerning public safety are not being addressed. And it is certain that the State, even as it might appear to be losing, is okay with that.

One of the many tricks of perception commonly used in the rigging of High Court cases is for the designated loser to be awarded what looks likes a victory in the early stages. This has the double effect of drawing the loser into committing to the process and of making the planned turnaround appear authentic when it happens. Though this is not that type of case, it is important to be aware of techniques which can be used against the public interest. 

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Councillor O'Rourke declared the Minister's apparent surrender a victory against the State and its will to ''run roughshod over a community without consulting with the democratic process''. This is problematic, to say the least. Though Hogan and Moran were in a position to take on the State, O'Rourke, Kenna and Dolan would have been expelled from their parties had they done so (and Moran could forget about ever again getting his waders under a ministerial desk). The political parties would have to have pre-approved the action, otherwise it simply would not have happened. It is impossible to understand the case as anything but an attempt by the State to protect itself, by moving street issues into the safe space of a courtroom.

Barristers generally deal in managed outcomes, they don't like surprises though they often simulate them for effect. The issues they went with in the Lissywollen case - environmental impacts, wastewater and traffic - qualify respectively as vague, unlikely (given an easy link up to town services, as with next door's old direct provision centre) and nonsense (given the go ahead for a large development in the area where most families will own a car). There is little reason why the Minister would lose such a case and there was never a reason to concede it.

Though it has been presented to the public as a new departure, the councillors' case is simply a pleading of the 1948 law, which states, ''A sanitary authority may by order prohibit the erection or retention of temporary dwellings on any land or water in their sanitary district if they are of opinion that such erection or retention would be prejudicial to public health or the amenities of the locality or would interfere to an unreasonable extent with traffic on any road''. The law was obviously intended to stop individuals and businesses from doing their own thing, not to hamper national government. So don't expect it to be upheld in the wider context.

The judge presiding over the case is Richard Humphreys, an interesting character. He probably gets through more cases than any other Irish judge and may well be the most intelligent member of our judiciary. He is arrogant and impatient though, habitually writing his judgments in advance of hearing all the evidence; and he is often contemptuous of the constitutional constraints placed on his powers. These characteristics, which appear to have made him a favourite among the most aggressive barristers, mean he is anything but a safe pair of hands when it comes to handling matters of public importance.

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Stuck for hours in the High Court, I would almost never chat with other litigants, on the grounds that, as Virgil put it, ''Each of us bears his own Hell''. This kind of self-censorship plays to the advantage of the most crooked lawyers (there really needs to be a union for screwed-over litigants). But the non-natives didn't seem to abide by the rule and I got talking to a gentle Bangladeshi and a streetwise Algerian (he called his homeland ''a shithole Arab country'') who were caught up in asylum cases. What the two had in common was that neither one of them had a clue what was going on. They just played their parts like we all do in these situations, by staying quiet and trusting the untrustable. 

The asylum case industry stands with the tribunals and the banks bailout (all of them created by barristers) as one of the greatest swindles ever inflicted on the Irish people. A sum in the high eight figures, and probably into nine, has been directed into the ever hungry maw of the bar for no reason other than legislation (written presumably by themselves) allows them to do it. The Golden Circle has cleaned up, with former government ministers Michael O'Kennedy and David Andrews pulling in more than E800k without setting foot in court and Andrews' daughter-in-law taking a cool million for representing the Attorney General in asylum cases. And that was before 2015.

Since 2015, an applicant's scope has significantly expanded. Refugee status, temporary or subsidiary protection (a category made malleable by the notion that the applicant might be subjected to 'degrading treatment' if repatriated) can be instantly applied for by any person, documented or otherwise, at the port of entry. A final assessment which could be taken in a matter of days by an experienced official with common sense instead gets directed through a quasi-legalistic application and appeals system, beset by a plethora of governmental organisations and State-funded NGOs mad to make themselves important. When all that fails, the applicant is commonly advised to apply to the High Court for judicial review (even though he is, by definition, not a citizen), leading to extended talking sessions for which the taxpayer pays both sides.

The importance of this industry to the barristers is illustrated by the membership of the International Protection Appeals Tribunal. At the latest count, there were 52 barrister members ... yes, 52. One of these, part time member John Noonan, pocketed E122k in 2023. The IPAT purports to be totally independent of the High Court, with ne'er a knowing nod or joke shared between the participants across the great divide, but its role sets up the High Court to act as a court of final appeal on points of law. 

In 2019 the High Court overturned an IPAT decision, ruling that a heterosexual Nigerian man should be granted asylum because his claim to have been persecuted for perceived homosexuality was not believed due to false conjecture on IPAT's part. In other words, an applicant has a shot to nothing in making up a story, as investigators are hardly going to travel to Dhaka or Lagos to check if it's genuine.

If so inclined, an average waiting time of 18.5 months prior to the High Court provides a sufficient stretch for a more active heterosexual to conjure up an anchor baby. Honesty is kryptonite to the law gang, so the courts are hard-wired to favour a calculating over an honest applicant.

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One barrister in particular played a huge part in creating this looming crisis. Peter Sutherland was a banker and senior counsel. He was the brains behind the 2008 banks bailout and is, by some distance, the most powerful person to have been produced by this State. As Special Representative on Migration for the UN and head of two other migration bodies, he campaigned for open borders, especially into the EU. 

Speaking four years after the banks bailout and three years before Germany's acceptance of nearly a million Syrian war refugees changed the game, Sutherland spoke of the need for the EU to undermine the homogeneity of its member states in order for it to compete at a global level. His arguments made some sense in terms of falling populations, particularly in the industrial powerhouses of Germany and Northern Italy, but those states' continued de-industrialisation offset that reasoning. 

The EU upped the ante in 2014, with an annual E448 million investment in its Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund. The investment would be more than doubled from 2021, in contradiction of pandemic travel restrictions and in line with Roderic O'Gorman's infamous February 2021 tweets (the ludicrous posting of a 'we've got the kettle on for ye' tweet as Gaeilge, in accordance with official document rules, points to the tweets being an expression of government policy and not a solo run). Most of the Western world has followed the EU's lead, and Ireland brought its procedures in line through the International Protection Act of 2015. 

Making sense of it all from the monied elites' point of view is difficult. The days when such people might have thought in terms of Christian obligation and the betterment of society are long gone. Some of the disappearances of immigrant children may relate to sex and/or slavery, possibly even to organ harvesting and transfusions; and the immigrants' cheap labour does help, but mainly in a hospitality sector which doesn't hugely interest them. Right now, it is hard to find any motive for their accepting of this situation other than that destabilisation of their homelands is somehow in their interests. I believe that the immigrants and the natives are being set up. Identity politics is an old British game which rarely ends well for anyone who picks a side. Think of what might happen if and when there is no money to pay for any form of welfare, public housing or lower level public employment. 

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A GoFundMe, like anything which asks for our money, is open to abuse. But it generally does what it says on the tin - helping pay for charitable ventures, disaster relief, to secure medical treatments and getting people out of bills they otherwise couldn't afford to pay. It came as a shock then, when Athlone ran a GoFundMe for Dublin lawyers and raised E52,000. Almost all the donations came from individuals and family run businesses. Irish travellers and people of Eastern European, East Asian and South Asian origin were prominent donors. Big business did not get involved and, tellingly, there were no donations from law firms or, as far as I know, from lawyers. The very first donation, the joint largest, from Frankie and Siobhan Keena is anomalous, as none of the other four councillors donated (politicians don't do anonymous generosity). 

Despite the councillors' claim that they had ''spent hundreds of hours ... preparing a case'', the preparatory work had already been done for the Thornton Hall case and little new was needed (and not a lot was needed for Thornton Hall). Genuine legal costs would have been minimal at that stage. The most important sentence in this article is, ''The court heard that legal costs had also been conceded by the State for the case''. This means that no matter what the lawyers find to be talking about over the next year or more, taxpayers will have to pay for the privilege and there will be no challenge to the 'costs' that will be charged to them. It may also mean that taxpayers are on the hook for the aforementioned preparatory work, that is not yet clear. 

The donors and the plaintiff need to make sure that PB Cunningham & Co. (*) are not charging twice for the same work and, if choosing not to charge taxpayers for the preparatory work, then that the charge to the GoFundMe account is appropriate. If this is not clarified, then I would recommend that the donors call 'fraud' and attempt to recover their donations under the website's Giving Guarantee.

* It is presumably a great coincidence that the same firm which was by far the worst paid - despite having the most significant job to do - among the four law firms which took part in the other Lissywollen High Court case (David Dully v Athlone Town Stadium Limited) should end up as the beneficiary of a massive fundraising drive in Athlone. Many people do believe that coincidences of this sort are possible.

  

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The indigenous Irish resistance, as it sometimes styles itself, tends to make people uncomfortable. It has its own problems and appears uneasy about where this is going and uncertain about who exactly is on its side. Its vulnerabilities have been expertly trolled by Dre Kannon, a man whom many want to be deported - presumably back to Lucan, where he grew up. If nothing else, a society which holds its rich and educated to no standards at all has no right to expect standards from anyone else. If you're cool with Diarmuid Rossa Phelan shooting Keith Conlon in the back of his head, then stop pretending to be outraged about the stabbing of Quham Babatunde.

So, what's with the natives in Athlone? First of all, moving a thousand or even twenty young men into one place with no obvious means of finding female company is going to cause trouble. That is an immutable law of nature which has been exploited by nasty old men down the ages. It is not the immigrants' fault, they only want to better themselves. But the artificial position they are in will create danger. People, especially locals with girls and young women in their families, are scared. That fear may be exacerbated by prejudice in some cases, but not in most. 

We don't get to hear from the immigrants themselves, except under the most controlled circumstances. They are generally spoken for by those who have an axe to grind or a wine cellar to fill. What are their dreams and ambitions? Have they skills, anything to offer us? What do we know about the influences which led them in this direction, who set their travelling arrangements, how it was all paid for? It is hard to imagine that they set out with any purpose other than to reach the EU, claim asylum there and, if successful, then move where they wish. But the trafficking apparently continues within the EU and the immigrants are dispersed across the union. This is probably organised by European mafia, but if so, who pays them and why?

Article 79 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU speaks of ''combating trafficking in persons, especially women and children''. Article 78 of the same Treaty mentions ''partnership and cooperation with third countries for the purpose of managing inflows of people applying for asylum or subsidiary or temporary protection''. It is not difficult to reach the conclusion that the EU has had the importation of men from third countries in mind for some time and isn't going to lose much sleep over how it happens. It is surely at least strange to talk of ''partnership and cooperation'' with the very regimes which failed to protect the applicants from the persecutions they claim to have suffered. And 'inflows' is a word more usually used in relation to movements of capital, not of people.

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Most of the locals happily supported the lawyers once the politicians had pointed them in that direction. It was the safe and respectable option, nobody was waving tricolours. Erudite barristers, passionate advocates taking up the cause of the people who called them, finding whatever weakness in the opposition's position is needed to achieve justice ... that's the way it happens on the telly and that's the way people expect it to play in reality. But barristers are, first and foremost, agents of the State. If they appear to be taking on the State, what they are actually doing is taking over the taking on of the State. 

What the telly barristers might do is highlight the absurdity of political parties and NGOs with gender quotas giving hugely preferential treatment to men. They might tease out exactly why Ireland is bound to accept an application when, before getting here, a huge majority of applicants have travelled through many European countries without applying for protection in any of them. They might argue the case that, if an economic migrant got here through being human trafficked with other men (a large majority of men points instantly to trafficking, as very few women would put themselves in such a vulnerable position), then granting asylum means that the State is feeding organised crime. Above all, what they might do is fight the case on the grounds of public safety. That would be in line with Article 17 1(d) of the relevant EU legislation - ''where there are serious reasons for considering that .... he or she constitutes a danger to the community or to the security of the Member State in which he or she is present.''. The argument would get a lot of public support and could well prove unstoppable (that is why it won't be made).

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A senior counsel is now the Minister for Justice and he has been throwing some Trumpian shapes. A few weeks ago, twenty eight men, three women and a child were deported to Georgia at a cost of E3,202 per head. I'm not sure how this action could be compatible with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, whose Article 19 says that ''Collective expulsions are prohibited''. If Georgia is being targeted, it might be because of tensions between the Georgian and Algerian factions in Dublin's Citywest Hotel, or possibly a sign of government preferring to streamline a process of pitting African and Muslim immigrants against the general population. But all of it ignores that Ireland is in the lucky position that it doesn't have to deport anyone to their homelands. Working with the authorities in Northern Ireland to secure the ports and airports, then simply returning anyone without an EU or UK passport, visa or work permit to the country they immediately left (usually Britain, France or Belgium) is the cheap and easy option.  

For now, we have too much law and not enough order. People on the ground, mostly working class, are left to deal with security risks, wage compression, the housing squeeze and what might be called a clash of cultures. The latter is really a clash of corruptions. Our corruption is basically a monopoly, controlled for its own benefit by the financial-legal-management class. The mass of the Irish people is not corrupt at all and we therefore have a functioning society which keeps the parasites nice and plump but can still manage to offer the opportunity for a decent life to most. The immigrants' corruption - the thing they want to escape from, while often coming from countries which are far richer than Ireland in terms of resources - is systemic. It is everywhere, part of everyday life and seldom disconnected from violence.

We already had a process of assimilation that was working well and was welcomed by a majority because a majority of our immigrants wanted to be a part of us. We have the beauty of citizenship ceremonies and colour blind GAA teams. We have changed for the better but must always keep alive that which makes the Irish way of life attractive to others. 

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Unless something changes soon, this is a tragedy in the making, possibly another Troubles. We need to talk to our guests, to find a way to end the fear and simmering hatred; to make sure we're on the same side when it all blows up, and that it is the social engineers who will pay the price. 

Instead of waiting on a crisis, we need stability, and ideas to make the stability permanent. It should be possible, for example, to levy an emergency wealth tax and mobilise the labour of the immigrants to build both their own accommodation and accommodation for the homeless. If they were to agree to this, they could suddenly find themselves trusted and welcome. 

In the meantime, Happy St. Patrick's Day to anyone who would like to join the fight to rid our beautiful country of its (mostly indigenous) snakes.