Rural Ireland Thinks poll: New faces welcomed to rural areas scarred by decades of emigration

Central to the story was a microcosm of the national disease throughout the 20th century, emigration, which left a pronounced blight on rural Ireland.

“We were losing our people, and we lost a lot of people,” Healy would later say.

Fast forward to the early 21st century and, to a large extent, emigration has been replaced by immigration.

You may travel to every nook and cranny across the State and it is now inevitable that you will find people who were not born here but came to better their lives.

In that context, it is interesting to observe that rural Ireland appears relatively comfortable with the changed landscape.

Asked in the Irish Examiner/Rural Ireland survey about issues that will influence their vote at the next election, just a quarter said that immigration would be in the top three.

Of seven issues presented to respondents, immigration came sixth, just above climate change in terms of priority.

The top three concerns to emerge in the survey were cost of living/inflation followed by the state of the health service, then the economy. Housing, surprisingly, in terms of the national scene, came in fourth.

Immigration has become a hot topic across Western Europe this year, with a number of national governments containing elements of far-right entities implacably opposed to immigrants from outside the EU.

In this country, the various protests, attacks on buildings, and ultimately the election of far-right councillors in the Dublin area all point to the changed political landscape.

Yet it would appear that rural Ireland is not getting itself in a knot in this respect.

Perhaps the race memory runs deep. The history of this nation in exporting its young has been repeatedly cited since certain elements have attempted to whip up opposition to those now arriving on these shores.

Some conveniently fail to recall the heartache, struggles, and separation that informed emigration.

Others retort that the Irish worked wherever they went, as if the hunger of the immigrant was a condition solely unique to the Celtic temperament.

Such base responses are inevitably retailed more widely by those who have no folk or local memory of the scourge of emigration.

Not so in rural Ireland, where the issue is ingrained in the psyche. Perhaps there is also, out beyond the main conurbations, a greater appreciation that people are the lifeblood of community and commercial life, irrespective of their origins.

To that extent, immigration into the country represents a repopulation of places that had been in long-term decline. New faces are welcomed as net contributors to the community.

In the bigger picture, the obsession in some quarters about immigration is really to do with asylum seekers, who make up a small cohort of those arriving in the country. A large number of these people, often more than half, are deemed to have a genuine case for international protection.

In recent years, a spike in numbers combined with the war in Ukraine has seen rural Ireland accepting large numbers of asylum seekers and refugees.

According to the Irish Examiner poll, around two-thirds of respondents feel that the Government is not doing a good job in handling the arrival of all categories of refugees into the country.

Just under half say they would object to an international protection centre opening near them, although a third disagree.

If any such centre was earmarked for Ukrainian rather than international protection personnel, only a third would object while half of respondents say they would not.

These figures would appear to echo sentiment across the State, whether in cities or rural Ireland.

It indicates principally that, domestically, the population has more affinity with fellow Europeans and that it is more obvious to the public that those from Ukraine are fleeing war.

Others interpret these figures as an example of low level racism, but that is not at all a given.

One response in the survey that has attracted a high degree of agreement is the question as to whether rural towns and villages have taken in a disproportionate share of asylum applicants.

Here, 66% agree with the proposition while just 14% disagree.

Certainly, there is copious evidence that in scrambling to acquire private accommodation for applicants, State agencies have managed to identify vacant buildings in rural Ireland far more readily than in cities or big towns.

This phenomenon is particularly acute in rural areas where tourism is the lifeblood of the economy, such as counties Clare and Kerry.

The locating of applicants in many of these areas has taken beds from the tourism sector and impacted negatively on local economies.

Despite that, there remains in general a welcome for those arriving on these shores whatever they may be fleeing.

One final aspect to this part of the survey concerns the effectiveness of garda policing of anti-migrant protestors.

Here, 41% believe An Garda Síochána has done an effective job, while 33% disagree.

One feature of these protests has been the arrival in rural outposts of far-right agitators who hope to whip up further opposition beyond the narrow, and often justified, grievances felt by locals.

It has been notable that such agitators often receive a cold reception from the local populace who recognise them for who they are and what they are attempting to do.