In its promotional leaflet, the Immigration Control Platform makes a stark but simple plea. It asks people to "help stop the invasion and colonisation of Ireland". At present in Ireland, and in Cork perhaps more than in other parts of the State, that message seems to be touching a raw nerve.
For much of last week, the Southern Health Board's hard- pressed immigration staff spent their time trying to run to ground two completely unfounded rumours which had gained popular currency. One concerned an asylum-seeker who was said to have bought himself a car using a cheque made out in his name by the local authorities. The story was that his children had been subjected to racial insults on the school bus and he had asked for and received money to buy a car so as to shield them from such torments.
The other concerned a Cork woman who was astounded to see that the asylum-seeker in front of her in the supermarket had a trolley laden with sweets, biscuits and other goodies, everything except nutritious food for her children. When the eavesdropper heard the checkout girl suggest she would be better off spending her money on decent food, she was just as astounded to hear the lady reply that it was her child's birthday and the immigration authorities had given her the money to help celebrate it.
The health board was inundated with calls from newsrooms anticipating a cracking story. Cork 96FM radio station gave more than ample airtime to aggrieved, even outraged, listeners who had heard the stories and discussed them as if they were true in every detail.When the politicians got in on the act and ran with the ball without checking the veracity of the claims, more credence was given to the notion that asylum- seekers, certainly in Cork, never had it so good while the rest of the struggling masses were being left to eke out their existence.
The stories, although denied by the board, became the launch pad for a general debate on asylum- seekers. Over the week, emotions ran higher. Ms Áine Ní Chonaill, spokeswoman for the Immigration Control Platform, defended her group's position.
She said Ireland was hurtling down the same road as Britain and Irish people did not want to emulate the British multiracial experience. It was untenable, she added, that Ireland should be the only state in the EU which gave automatic right of citizenship to the child of a non-national born here.
She said the immigration control system was a shambles. The time had come for Ireland to invoke the opt-out clause under Article 44 of the Geneva Convention; to say it had done as much as it could and would do only what made sense in Irish terms.
She said the Government should establish an immigration level "comfortable" for Ireland and there should be an expanding order of priorities. Resources should be aimed first at Irish people at home and abroad, next at European citizens who wished to come here, and only then at applicants from the wider world.
Ms Ní Chonaill, a secondary teacher in west Cork, becomes annoyed when asked to discuss the membership of her group. She claims questions on the numbers involved are no more than a cant which has been repeated by journalists over and over again. So, to which member of the organisation should the question be addressed? "I am the spokesperson for the organisation and the only one designated to speak on its behalf; no one else is mandated to do so."
Much more important than membership, she stressed, was the fact that the Irish authorities had lost control. Asylum-seekers were pouring across the Border from Northern Ireland and arriving here by whatever means they could in unprecedented numbers.
The Government was putting a "spin" on the fact that numbers dropped slightly last year but forgot to mention that for several months the Border was sealed because of foot-and-mouth disease. Whether they passed or failed the criteria for refugee status, some 90 per cent of asylum-seekers stayed for good.