Opposition play the immigrant card in a political race to the bottom

IT IS now open season on discussing immigration in our political system. Having been too retentive about the issue for too long, the pendulum has swung the other way.

However, there is a real risk that all restraint on the topic is being thrown aside in a political race to the bottom. What has been most disturbing is the way figures are recklessly thrown around or ratcheted up in the immigration debate. Both opposition parties have been guilty of this in recent weeks.

Early last month the Labour leader, Pat Rabbitte, in order to emphasise the risk of so-called displacement of Irish workers, spoke about how there are “40 million Poles after all”.

It was a dramatic phrase and the context in which it was used could only conjure up images in voters’ minds of thousands of more Poles coming here to displace Irish workers. This week it was reported that Pat Rabbitte admitted to a private Labour party meeting that he was wrong to use this phrase. It is well he might.

I find myself in complete agreement with the former Labour European election candidate Ivana Bacik who, on Questions and Answers on Monday night, denounced her party leader’s use of language on this issue as unfortunate and disappointing.

Now, perhaps drawing crude political lessons from the bounce that Rabbitte got in the opinion polls, Fine Gael has followed suit. They have proved equally as adept at embellishing figures in order to scaremonger about immigrants.

On Monday evening the news bulletins led with the story that EU migrants working in Ireland will be able to claim the new early childcare payment announced in the Budget for their children, even if those children are not living in Ireland.

The report went on to cite Fine Gael claims that the cost of these payments, together with child benefit payments to such workers, could amount to €150m.

Later that night on Questions and Answers, the Fine Gael MEP Máiréad McGuinness, who appeared understandably uncomfortable on the issue, was perplexed when John Bowman asked where Fine Gael had got the €150m figure. She said the only figure she had, and that the payment could give rise to, was €50m.

The figure of €150m was in fact contained in a press release by Fine Gael on Monday afternoon.

Curiously, this release was issued in the name of their spokesperson for Dublin, Senator Brian Hayes, and not their Social and Family Affairs spokesperson, David Stanton, who usually leads the charge on childcare issues. In his release and follow-up interviews, Hayes talked about how since 166,000 EU migrants were currently working in Ireland, then if one-third of these had children under six, this group could claim €50m worth of this early childcare supplement. Hayes then went on to claim that an additional €100m could be claimed by these migrants in child benefit.

Not surprisingly, the journalists did the tot. The figure of €150 million made its way into headlines on Monday evening because Fine Gael put it there. Having ratcheted up the figure unduly, Fine Gael then pulled back a bit and talked about their €50m figure only.

No basis for the demographic breakdown that one-third of all EU migrant workers here had children under six at home was given - this was top-of-the-head stuff.

Indeed in the Dáil the next day, Enda Kenny relied instead on a suggestion that a one-quarter of them had children. This, he admitted, he had simply garnered from a news report.

He thereby undermined the basis of his own party’s calculation the day before. However, he still bandied the figure of €50m around the Dáil chamber.

David Stanton did actually surface on Morning Ireland on Tuesday morning. He again talked about the 166,000 migrant workers and wanted to know what the real cost of the new early childcare payments to this group would be. He then went on to answer his own question by repeating the exaggerated figures.

Stanton also suggested that the Government would have avoided this difficulty if, instead of this new direct payment, they had followed the Fine Gael suggestion of a credit for vouched childcare expenses.

This was a dishonest suggestion. In their childcare policy document published among a rush of similar policy documents on childcare in the weeks before the Budget, Fine Gael did not suggest vouchers as an alternative to this direct early childcare payment - it suggested them in addition to it. The actual words used were: “We will make a direct payment of €1,000 each year for each child until the child goes to primary school.”

WHILE this payment would stop a year earlier than the one Brian Cowen announced on Budget day (ie, at the school going age of five rather than six), this is precisely the same payment and would equally have been available to EU migrants living here even if their children were still in the country of origin.

Fine Gael, in their document, did suggest an additional credit for vouched childcare expenses after five years of age, but this credit would have been of no benefit to women in the home minding their own children.

As one Government deputy shouted out when Enda Kenny repeated the suggestion - who would the stay-at-home mom, present her voucher to? Would she have to get her husband to sign it, or sign it herself, to prove she had done the work?

The reality of the situation is a long way from what Fine Gael has tried to suggest. The cost of paying this new payment to EU migrants for children not living in Ireland on current projections will be about e1m. That figure is calculated on the basis of the number of such workers who have claimed child benefit to date and extrapolating from that how many of them are likely to have children under six and likely to claim the new payment for them.

Of course that figure may change (not least because one of the side-effects of this controversy has been to increase awareness about the entitlement) - but there is no way of predicting that change in pattern, and even if it changed radically it would still cost nothing akin to the figures Fine Gael has suggested.

Since 1973 migrants from EU member states working in Ireland (where they, it should be remembered, pay both tax and PRSI) have been entitled to payments of family-type benefits.

Where their country has a similar benefit they are entitled to the difference between the rate there and the one in Ireland. Reciprocal arrangements have benefited many Irish people living in other member states.

Maybe the overstating of the figures by Fine Gael arose because it was trying to wedge this issue into a pattern of Government overspending or under-budgeting. Maybe it can all be put down to a rush of publicity-seeking from Brian Hayes and the leadership felt compelled to row in behind him.

However, coming as it does after Pat Rabbitte’s remarks and recent polls, maybe it was a none too subtle attempt by Fine Gael to garner its share of the political capital to be gained from pandering to immigration concerns.

The dangerous thing about all of this is that it feeds powerful myths suggesting that immigrants are ripping off our welfare system or threatening to bankrupt our social insurance budget.