“If the legislature here are discussing the possibility of changes in order to legalise and regularise their position, well, you know, they’re entitled to be here from that point of view. But in a strict sense, I suppose, they’re illegal,”
This is part of what the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said in the US recently in defence of illegal Irish immigrants in that country.
Hypocritical Irish politicians are of the opinion that the illegal Irish in America suffer more because they are unable to come home to attend Uncle Pat’s funeral or little Mary’s First Holy Communion than the average Afghan being sent back to one of the poorest and most violent countries in the world.
Speaking such idiot talk outside Ireland is not easy for Irish politicians. They are used to operating in a corrupt state where any old guff passes for intelligent analysis.
Here’s a letter from Friday’s Irish Times that gives a good idea of the respect our politicians have earned for their profession
Madam, – Dermot Ahern is beginning to speak the same incomprehensible garbage as his namesake. How can “illegal Irish immigrants” be “entitled to be in America”?
That elected representatives of this country can spout this kind of rubbish is shameful. – Yours, etc,
DERMOT SWEENEY, Viking Harbour, Dublin 8.