Three-year-old Aylan Kurdi and his older brother, Galip, aged five, from Syria, who reportedly drowned while attempting to reach Kos, Greece from Turkey. Aylan’s body was reportedly found washed up on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey.
Germany taking in 800,000 refugees or 1% of its population. If Ireland was as proportionately generous, we’d take in 50,000, not 600 (.01%)
— Elaine Byrne (@ElaineByrne) September 3, 2015
Family of Syrian boy washed up on beach were trying to reach Canada (The Guardian)
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WE SHUD B LOOKIN AFTER ARE OWN FURST THERE KIDS OUT IN THE STREEH THEY SHUD BE GETTIN JOBS IN DER OWN COUNTRY
A prevalent attitude, but make no mistake, the people who are making the calls and voicing the loudest objections aren’t the ones with bad grammar/spelling, but the ones with parliamentary aides and subeditors.
No, it’s mostly the scumbags.
Ah, working class people? Funny because that’s who’s been donating to us for Calais. But sure what would I know, I’m only a scumbag..
No, not working class people like me. Scumbags.
You forgot the bit about ECONOMIC MIGRANTS INNIT THEY SHOULD JUST STAY IN LIBYA SURE ITS FINE THERE WHY DONT THEY GO TO SAUDI CAUSE THEY ARE THE ISLAMISTS THERE TO but yeah, pretty good.
Post this on the Journal’s comment section and see how many thumbs up you get, I’m curious
Yeah Elaine, to hell with the micro and macro economies. Whatever Germany does we should do, because although our populations differ, we’re almost identical in every other facet. In fact, I’d say our industries and level of production are even greater.
Elaine Byrne… We’d be lost without her ad her sage observations.
If Germany, or anybody, does the right thing, we should do the right thing too.
Tonnes of European funds from multiple schemes are available for it, we might have to stump up, but it’s the duty of a civilised country to offer aid to these people. You can abdicate that responsibility, but don’t pretend it’s something we *cannot* do, you just don’t want to do it.
Do you think any quotas or planning is required? Or should we just throw caution to the wind? Should we approach it like the Luas?
Formal quota system could take months to get through the mess that is European governance. For a start Ireland should offer to take whatever it can handle of the hundreds of thousands of refugees already in Europe, I don’t know what that number is, but there needs to be a short-term burden share while the politicians finish disagreeing.
Is USA taking on any?
And no, I don’t accept… ‘USA is not in Europe’ …if USA can destabilise the region, they can shoulder responsibility and should be taking a large proportion of the millions displaced.
USA is the elephant in the room no one is talking about.
They’re trying to flee FROM regimes that are actively trying to kill them, not toward.
:-) Good coment
Clamps , lets rescue the people from the burning house first, we can investigate who started the fire after all are safe and accounted for …
+1
I agree.
No one has more ships capable of taking these people to safety than USA. So let’s get them into the med to clean up the mess of humanity they’ve created.
No ‘blame’ required, no investigation needed, everyone knows, USA created the problem but isn’t facing any of the consequences.
I thought drowning people was the elephant in the room or has been the last 4 years). Sorry but feck your responsibility jargon, they want to come here, so be it. It’s about compassion.
No matter how much you theorise and guess who’ll go where and suggest other options, these people are coming, get a grip on reality and help.
Jumping the gun boyo, I never said Ireland shouldn’t do it’s bit, I’m saying everyone should do their bit
Ireland of the thousand welcomes. Céad míle fáilte. Sure come on in, you’re in your granny’s. Why is it I’m not hearing these statements when it comes to terrified people fleeing lunatics, so terrified in fact that they risk rape, theft and murder, not to mention drowning, to get to a place where someone will offer them shelter and give them a start.
I know we’re in trouble, but it’s a tiny drop of trouble compared to the trouble these people are in.
@Digs
Not every decision should be an economic one.
Nor should it be knee jerk.
Agreed, we shouldn’t just follow what other countries do but we certainly SHOULD offer help to these migrants.
A short term response is necessary , a long term solution to be decided upon. Germany is the only country that seems to be demonstrating any sort of logic and empathy. The “welcoming Irish” is just a façade.
Dead right digs! Let them drown.. Soz to all the Iraqis and all about Shannon being used to destroy your country, but the simple fact is economics, numbers, graphs etc. Sorry.
You’re a dimwit.
Since it’s too difficult to respond to solid points I’ll try your level of communication. You’re a xenophobe..
I think this is the worst comment I’ve read on this site, well done, mindlessly invoking economics as pretext to applying the kind of logic a dim parent would use on a teenager who’d gone goth (“if Paul jumped into a fire would you?”) to nation states dealing with a humanitarian crisis.
Yep, that’s what I was doing alright. Very astute there.
Read the comments of liberal guardian readers.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/03/refugee-crisis-test-david-cameron
Oh you mean educated readers who know that accumulating wealth at the expense of others is not the end game in life.
For feck sake stop feeding the troll.
We didn’t want the Jews either.
We could do with more juice alright.
http://hipsterhitler.com/juice/
To be fair no one wanted OJ after the trial.
well he didn’t want to pay his dues
Avon, they probably would get jobs in their own country if it wasn’t for you know, the war and terrorists and what not. Apparently having your family killed by bombs and the threat of never seeing a family member again when they leave the house; well it kind of ruins your work ethic a little.
WHOOOOOOSH
Your caps lock is on.
Evidentially not something is not witty enough.
You can’t help some people Avon.
https://uplift.ie/refugee-crisis/
Signed
…careful now Elaine, that’s not going to go down well with Renua when you address them later..
Extension to Mosney, ahoy!
That’s what I was thinking. Take 600, 700 or whatever new refugees, shove them into Mosney for years and years on €19 per week while our bureaucratic, antiquated, red taped asylum process trundles along. We currently have doctors, teachers, engineers, artists all stuck in processing centres not allowed to work or contribute to society because of a joke of system that works at snails pace. Sure 1000 more people into the mix should speed it up.
The photo of the kid dead on the beach is heartbreaking…
Icelanders have opened up their homes to the refugees :)
icelanders are the new sweden.
sweden used to be our model of “ireland is poo , look at the swedes”
that lie is currently being exposed so the worthies are moving to iceland as the new utopia …
The worthies? Is that what we’re calling the “burn the bondholders, look at Iceland” brigade now?
no.
the social engineering crowd who read the guardian and IT and constantly moan how crap ireland is and they love a good facebook like as well.
labour voters most of them don’t care if there is food on the table once their liberal agenda is top of the agenda.
you know them , some may call the Social Justice warriors….
Right, so when group A say Iceland is great that’s OK but when group B say Iceland is great they deserve nothing but ridicule and contempt.
Good to know.
Most social justice ‘warriors’ are not in parties and probably do more to participate in their communities and espouse democratic ideas than voting in parliamentary elections, and on that note, what makes you think people who support social justice would vote for a centre-right wing party like Labour? Also, guardian and IT? Do you know the difference between what you call social justice warriors and those who profess the ideology of liberalism?
If you’re going to comment, figure out who you’re attacking because I think you’re very confused about who’s doing what.
No they have not. Someone signing a petition online about things they intend to do is not the same as doing it.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody in Iceland is hosting Syrian families as a result of the Facebook page. It is an attempt to put pressure on the Government.
It is a truly brutal image.
It shouldn’t take that photo for people to realise the scale of the crisis and the tragedies playing out every day.
Maybe refugees should set up a Twitter account for the phone zombies to take note.
That’s unfair – it’s the way it’s been reported thus far. Newspapers and TV have constantly conflated ‘refugee’ with ‘migrant’, making it an immigration issue and not a refugee issue. Politicians have seized on this confusion.
They are migrants. They still deserve help though.
No, they are refugees fleeing wars that were started, supported or contributed to, by us. My brother is a migrant, I’ve been a migrant, my mother was a bloody migrants, these families with bombed out gaffs and no city or place to go are refugees.
And yes, migrants are welcome too.
No, they are not refugees. This family was in Turkey and was trying to get to Canada. There may suffer prejudice in Turkey but they were not fleeing a war in Turkey.
One can be both, i.e.seek refuge and make a better living in a selected country.
Explain how are these wars ” were started, supported or contributed to, by us”?
Chalk and cheese comparison.
Ireland needs to shoulder responsibility.
….but it does not need to do so to the same extent that Germany does, one is not a carbon copy of the other… in miniature. It’s not a simple proportional comparison.
And why isn’t USA taking tanker loads of people, they destabilised the region?
The white christians wouldnt like it
what are you talking about responsibility??? Ireland has no responsibility to anyone …. The VAST MAJORITY or Irish people would like a measured response to the crisis…..600 people is plenty giving the economic and social situation in Ireland
All the INTERNET activists will have moved onto the next sexy facebook campaign next week …….
human, ha, now there’s a stupid user name given the content of the users posts. You fool.
This is a horrible humanitarian crisis. We have to accept the vast majority of Syrians (amongst other nationalities) have no longer any country to live in. We can be cynical, blame others, leave it to other countries or do the only moral thing and share our part of the burden. The Dublin Agreement has to be scrapped also.
‘We have to accept the vast majority of Syrians (amongst other nationalities) have no longer any country to live in’
What about the small minority? you don’t want them? RACIST
I’m not saying Ireland does nothing.
I’m saying responsibility needs to be placed where it belongs. The vast majority of which is on USA.
+1
If you saw someone being mugged in the street would wait to see if someone standing nearer to the mugging helped before offering yourself?
Did I say Ireland should wait. No, I didn’t.
Read what I said, not what you wanted me to say.
I read what you are saying. It is irrelevant what other countries do. We should do what is right. Pointing to Germany or the USA is a smokescreen.
No, it is not.
We can do both.
You’re right about the USA, but I think we all know the chances of that happening.
I know they ‘started it’, but blaming the USA gives us no moral high ground. Don’t forget there has been millions of refugees stuck in over crowded camps in Jordan and Turkey etc for years. We never volunteered to take any of them in or share any of that burden. We all largely ignored it as someone else’s problem, just like the USA are doing now.
I’m not looking for moral high ground. But Europe should be making the yanks sit up and take responsibility for a large proportion of this problem. If USA thinks it can police the world, let it take responsibility when it’s policing for profit for corporations blows up in its face.
It’s simple and straight forward, and yes, not likely to happen. But the noise should be made !
And Israel surely?
Who backs Israel with over US$6BN a year…. USA. Let’s go for the big guy, Israel comes under that.
Stop trying to turn the issue into responsibility, what the hell is wrong with you? It’s about compassion.
You can do both
Blaming the yanks is a complete cop-out. They’re not the tyrants running and destroying these countries at the moment.
You need glasses
The key to winning over the majority of people to welcoming more refugees into Ireland (not that they should really need to be won over…but, howsoever..) is to try to make it so that it doesn’t appear that the whole of the middle east is marching into Europe.
If people had a well founded perception that this is just a temporary issue which is on the way to being solved (by military and/or democratic means in the likes of eg Syria and Eritrea) then (imho) people would be more comfortable allowing (say) 5,000 or 10,000 people to settle in Ireland.
Lets call a spade a spade. What some people fear is that millions of people will continue to march west for the next several decades and that the world will never be the same again.
I genuinely don’t know where I stand.
The image is heartbreaking and made me very sad, I want to help these people.
however a knee-jerk reaction to allow loads of people move and settle here wouldn’t be in our interests.
There was little demands to take Palestinians when the Israeli navy killed the 4 kids on the beach.
The current media pictures are of Syrians , but cast your mind back to a few months ago when the navy ship was sent out to the Mediterranean , the pictures were all of Africans
In fact skynews did a report on people smuggling from central africa with little mention of syria.
The implicationw as they were economic rather than genuine refugees.
There is an element of agenda here , although I’m well aware children have drowned and that should supercede any political commentary.
If we let them in , can we handle the numbers , we can’t seem to handle the direct provision cases as is.
Perhaps make our system more robust and kick our the people that fail the test with limited appeals and free up places for people from genuine warzones.
But our leaders need to be more accountable for their support and friendship with war monger states.
NATO created the unrest in the middle east and north africa – yet our leaders smile and shake their hands with no rebuke EVER.
The UK had a big hand in destabilising Syria. It is in the UK govts interest to play that down… so it is of no surprise that UK BSkyB does so.
I think many people share your concerns donkey.
This is a real manifestation of globalisation. People in Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia are really very well tied into current political, cultural and economic affairs in Europe. Transport links and, in particular, communications and social media, have improved to such a degree that the thought of walking/hitching or, indeed, sailing to Europe’s borders and onwards to the destination of ones choosing to meet up with friends and family does not seem remote.
Completely agree. Also, explaining how this 5-10k will be housed, managed, funded etc is also key, as well as a plan as to how this would seek to be unwound (partially or wholly) when the situation recovers in their homeland. Also, promising that there wont be a “ah well, they’ve settled here now, let them stay” kicker to it all in 5yrs time would also help. Whatever is planned/agreed now must be what actually takes place in future years.
European funding, empty houses. It’s not science.
But sure we’ll just keep discussing what we’ll do with our privileges while they die. I’m amazed at even how good people are having xenophobia slowly drawn out of them. What is actually wrong with people. They don’t have poxy time to wait around while young people make excuses online and old people make excuses in parliaments. I’m disgusted.
The world will never be the same again. That’s the way it always has been, it’s just difficult for “some people” to learn to accept. Eurasia for the Eurasians. Keep Gondwanaland Gondwanalandian. No to pleistocene African climate change refugees…
No one who speaks german could be an evil man
Lame.
The cynical side of me would question Germany’s real motivation for welcoming so many Syrians. They have one of the lowest birth rates in Europe which is a potential speed bump to their economic growth. The Syrians are largely well educated peoples with a lot to offer the country they settle in. Perfect for an economy such as Germany’s. Having said that I believe we do need to start taking in our share of refugees as these are seriously desperate people and compassion and somewhere safe to live is surely the list we can do.
Fellow cynic here with regard to Germany’s motives. I’m not sure what the answer is but when Peter Sutherland is advocating something, it’s generally in the interest of the 1%, not the rest of us.
I did wonder what the tinfoil hats would think of Suds involvement. I now have my answer.
+1
Self interest is his only aim so you can’t blame anyone for doubting anything he says.
+ 1 When Sutherland’s lips are moving my predominant thought is who’s he manipulating and why.
Can’t help but imagine my little nieces & nephews (born & reared safe in Ireland) having to go through an horrific ordeal like that. And ending up on a beach like that poor little mite. Such a sh*t situation. there should not be such a huge loss of life here.
Should Ireland follow on in Iceland’s footsteps & start offering our homes to refugees? We know our government will not do enough…
Iceland hasn’t offered anything.
11,000 people in Iceland are offering their homes
11,000 people moved their finger an inch to like some page.
Ok totally fair point.
one more kid who’ll never go to school
never get to fall in love
never get to be cool.
rip
Poor little fellas. RIP
+1.
The bickering in the comments section is equally as disheartening as the image. The world is fcuked.
I couldn’t agree more.
Agree amazed it’s even a discussion, human life is so cheap depending on your place of birth. That’s pretty vile.
I care more.
i see elsewhere the turkish authorities arrested 4 men in connection with the trafficking of migrants. Nowhere have i read of the boats and trucks carrying these people being confiscated, nobody else arrested or charged with these offiences. anyone idea why?
Accepting immigrants isn’t a solution. Boots on the ground coupled with neo-colonialism is. If these places can’t govern themselves they needed to be governed from elsewhere.
RIP little children
Blair & Bush war criminals
So what’s the agenda? Flood the market with cheap labour, diminish employee rights even further, promote a fearful SlaveBridge environment = more money and control for those who can’t get enough of it.
Not that any of that addresses the plight of the refugees.
By all means, we should take as many refugees as we can in, but I don’t think Ireland’s resources should be compared to Germany’s. Germany can afford to support tens of thousands of refugees, it has the social welfare system set u to cope with it. It’s a booming, wealthy country with a huge economy. Ireland, on the other hand, is not able to even manage its own housing and homelessness crisis at the momen, and I would hope that any new refugees are not thrown into some kind of Mosney- hell hole and given 19 euro a week to live on!..