Alan Barrett

I mean, I know we think we're complete world beaters at the moment of the Irish public finances are an amazing state.

People like me and others continually talk about the vulnerabilities.

And this is yet another vulnerability that's coming to the fore.

No, I think, well, I mean, firstly, just a quick comment on the 80% in the polls.

So this finding now that, you know, 80%, whatever it was, you know, held the view that the supports or whatever like that should be wound down.

I mean, that's an extraordinary, to get an 80% on any question in any poll is quite extraordinary.

But I think we need to be careful to sort of jump to the conclusion that everybody in that 80% is responding for the same reasons.

So there was always a group of people who were sort of, you know, anti-immigrant and very sort of, you know, cautious about over generosity to the group of people.

There will be a group of people there now who are sort of moving and sort of saying, well, the cost of living and everything like that, again, can we support everybody?

But I think there's also a group of people at this stage who would sort of say specifically in regard to the Ukraine war,

That like after four years where people have been here for a long time, there is a sense that there's been an opportunity for them to, in a sense, normalise their sort of their situations.

Now, again, of course, it won't apply to everybody, but, you know, that's a reasonable length of time.

And say, for example, when we grant people asylum status or refugee status, that's the point then at which they're sort of supposed to, if I can use the phrase, mainstream and integrate and do all the other things that other people have to do.

So, like, immigration is still an enormously complicated and complex issue.

And I think people are responding in different ways to different things.

I don't want to be overly harsh about it, OK?

But I think, I mean, you often hear the phrase the social contract, OK?

And this is the notion about, you know, how governments and people behave towards one another.

I think it would have been reasonable to say, for example, maybe, you know, by the fifth anniversary of the war in Ukraine, that I think with all of these sort of things, if you give people enough notice that you sort of say, look, we have supported you to the best of our ability for, you know, over a long period of time.

But they've done that, haven't they?