University lecturer: Far-right foothold unlikely

There is currently little appetite for a far-right movement in Ireland despite the first such election victory in Germany since the 1930s having occurred earlier this month.

That’s according to Dr Emmanuelle Schon-Quinlivan, a lecturer in European politics at the Department of Government at UCC.

Towards the beginning of September, German anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), celebrated a historic and comfortable victory in the country’s eastern state of Thuringia.

With France’s far-right figurehead, Marine Le Pen, having secured a resounding majority vote at the European Parliament elections in June, concerns of a far-right resurgence in Europe have been raised.

Here, there have been violent anti-immigration protests and confrontations in Dublin and other locations across the country, including in Cork where asylum seekers are due to be housed.

However, Dr Schon-Quinlivan, a French native, said she does not feel a far-right political party will gain a foothold in Ireland any time soon.

“First of all, what we need to highlight about these situations is that they are geography dependent and history dependent,” she told the Cork Independent.

“When Angela Merkel said, ‘Wir schaffen das’, (we're going to make it), and they took in a million migrants into the country in 2015, that unsettled a lot of people.

“When it comes to Ireland, it has a different history,” added Dr Schon-Quinlivan.

She pointed out that, when Ireland took in over 100,000 Ukrainian refugees when the war broke out between Ukraine and Russia, the economy was strong at the time, but the country was already experiencing a long-running housing crisis and mounting pressure on services such as the HSE.

“We will always blame the other,” continued Dr Schon-Quinlivan.

“We'll always say, ‘Oh, my problems are due to the others’, – we look outside rather than at our own country.

“So, instead of blaming the government for having done nothing regarding the health service for the 24 years I've been here, or for not anticipating the demand in housing, we'll blame the migrants and those who are coming in,” she added.

Looking ahead, Dr Schon-Quinlivan said she does not think there is any appetite for an identarian extreme right party in Ireland, stating that, according to recent polls, Irish voters are quite “middle-of-the-road” and would still favour a tri-party coalition, with numbers suggesting a drift back towards Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in recent years.

“Now, that doesn't mean we should ignore the fringes,” she continued.

“The mistake that cannot be made is to outcast anyone who raises concerns regarding pressure on services, on tightening the rules on who we let in.

“Like I always say to my kids, if five migrants come to our door, of course we'll put them up – ten, we'll put them up, we have a big garden – 40, we'll put them up, but 150? There's only so much we can do,” she added.

Dr Schon-Quinlivan said it is crucially important not to “automatically ostracise” people who are raising fair questions.

She said: “To jump straight to the conclusion and say, ‘That's it, they're racist’, – that will push people to radicalise.

“I think it could be a slow poison where people will say, 'We're not heard by the main parties, so we're going to go more radical’.