What are we to do about the steady tide of illegal immigrants sneaking across the Border by night - no doubt with the assistance from some of the bright lads from Cullaville and Culyhanna with time on their hands these days - or stowing away in the lifeboats of the Holyhead ferries and hunching inside the wheelwells of incoming aircraft from Britain? What are we to about them all?
One word. Nothing. Sorry, let me correct that. Two words. Welcome them. If there's one single truth which immigration will tell any society, it is that where there is a will, there is a way. You can be sure that these immigrants within a week or two will find work, regardless of the allegation that there is no work to be had. Our unemployment figures are pure fiction and have been massaged upwards by the niminy-piminy attitude of our political establishment towards dole fraud.
State largesse
For part of us likes the notion of a large and munificent welfare state, spending lavishly. It makes us feel good. It almost defines us as a nation. Indeed, we have spent the past 15 years bending over backwards trying to create a welfare state which would match or even exceed the British model, as if the running of a state were all about the generosity with which largesse was distributed.
The result is entirely predictable, though as far as I can see, nobody predicted it - simply because to criticise the provision of welfare benefits would have been seen as being reactionary, heartless, Thatcherite, Reaganite, neo-conservative, unChristian, etc., etc., etc. The economic truths - and that they are as obvious as they are unprofound - were ignored. We can call it the Cantona principle. As trawlers draw flocks of seagulls from the wide open seas (and thereby excuse them the duties of hunting for fish in difficult waters) so the benefits of the welfare state draw to the hatches and the post offices of the State people who might otherwise find real work in the real economy.
We know this has happened. We know this from the workforce survey conducted a year ago. We also know from the begging, pleading signs on shops and restaurants everywhere - Help wanted: Apply within - that there is work galore in Ireland, for those who want it. But most of that work is lawful work, and the culture of State generosity, resulting from the insane competition with the British (the British, it must be said, were blithely unaware of this) to construct a more generous welfare state than they had, has created a huge market for illegal, dole-compatible employment.
There are plenty of jobs available in Ireland. Get a plumber or an electrician or a painter to work in your home, and watch him cheerily vanish in the morning to get some vital tool that each week at the same time he perplexingly and unfailingly finds he needs and has forgotten. Where is he going? To the hatch in Werburgh Street or Gardiner Street or wherever to collect his dole, and his butter coupons, and his rent allowance, and his medical card and whatever you're having yourself.
Political heresy
Once upon a time, such an observation was political heresy on a par with favouring public executions and employing child chimney sweeps. We know now, from figures released by the most left-wing administration this country has known, that dole fraud is simply colossal. Last September, in some of the most shocking figures this State has ever issued, it was revealed by the Government that some £350 million a year is being stolen in dole fraud.
This is a conservative estimate, based on a labour survey done the previous April, in which 10 per cent of dole recipients were found to be working, had supplied false addresses, or were not interested in getting work. And the figures do not take into account dole recipients who lied, nor the taxes such people are not paying on the wages they are getting from their criminal employment.
They cheat the State twice over; the first time in their claiming of various moneys for not working; and the second time in their non-contribution from the income they are earning illegally. State services - including the very dole they are claiming - have to be paid for.
This is not new. It has been known for a year. But no administration - and we have had every party bar Hare Krishna and Save The Whales in power in the past year -has had the nerve to tackle the problem. In a political culture of oppositionism, any move to close down this colossal fraud - more insidious and economically damaging by far than anything which happened in the beef industry or at Kinsealy - would be met with indignant cries of Thatcherism, Reaganism, etc., with a few pious episcopal bleats of wittering disapproval thrown in for good measure.
Any attempt to close down the welfare fraud could be sure of the opposition of the quarter of a million people on the dole - understandably. To go back to Cantonomics for a moment, would the seagulls vote to close the trawler? The political establishment could perhaps ride the opposition of this huge constituency; but it would have to ride the opposition of the combined opposition too. The result? By general consent, dole fraud continues unabated, even in the fastest growing economy in Europe, and one of the fastest growing in the world.
Ridiculous policy
And now we have embarked on this ridiculous policy of trying to stop illegal immigrants arriving from the North, often enough on the illegal or immoral or simply racist basis that an immigration officer in Amiens Street doesn't like the colour of the skin of somebody getting off the train.
We cannot answer for the failure of others' immigration control. If non-EU nationals have managed to get into the European Union and want to come to work here from other EU countries, they are probably the sort of people with initiative and enterprise whom we should welcome. They will get work. It's not them we should be worrying about, but about the institutionalised dole-fraud which has become the biggest financial scandal in the history of the Irish State.