Irish Examiner view: A challenge we must confront

Climate change migration

Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman pointed out that a more serious problem will also manifest itself through the appearance of more newcomers seeking to come to Ireland: Climate change, and the refugees that that challenge will create. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins

In an interview with this newspaper, Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth Roderic O’Gorman ranged over different aspects of the integration part of his brief.

He noted, for instance, the possibility that the Irish visa programme may have to be updated to accommodate the economic migrants who will be necessary to address specific skills shortages.

However, he also pointed out that a more serious problem will also manifest itself through the appearance of more newcomers seeking to come to Ireland: Climate change, and the refugees that that challenge will create.

O’Gorman pointed out that it is “very real that habitable land is being rendered uninhabitable”, adding that those displaced “are not economic migrants in the traditional sense — some of them are fleeing a place that no longer exists, or at least may no longer be habitable for humans.”

Climate refugees are not figures from a JG Ballard dystopia, but a reality being faced in places such as Fiji, which is to relocate dozens of villages threatened by rising sea levels.

Preparing the ground

O’Gorman deserves credit for raising the topic, particularly at a time when the social service systems in Ireland are under pressure from the influx of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war in their home country. It would have been far easier politically to let this issue drift until a resolution reached in Ukraine eased pressures here, but by introducing it into the discourse, O’Gorman has perhaps prepared the ground for this becoming part of future planning.

In the wider scheme of things, however, O’Gorman has also reminded us of the variety of questions likely to be raised by the great existential challenge of our time — and how that challenge is one all of us must confront.