Have we gone utterly mad? Alone of the 15 member-states of the EU, we're going to allow citizens of the new EU members unfettered access to our welfare system. No other country is doing this. Those states which originally had open-access policies have looked at the potential consequences, and one by one backed away from them - all except us, writes Kevin Myers
Listen to the prime minister of lovely, liberal Sweden, where men have periods and urinate sitting down, and where foreigners who kill the country's leading politicians - as regularly happens, it seems - are promptly given counselling. Goran Persson declared: "I expect enormous problems unless we protect ourselves. We would be naïve if we didn't see the risks. It is very easy to foresee a situation where very many will easily obtain work permits and then, once inside our country, have access to the entire social security net."
No, this is not the Obergruppenfuehrer of Das Viking SS Division speaking, but the elected leader of the most liberal people in the world. He foresees problems, possibly because he has thought the issue through, as Swedes do. Which is why Volvo invented the seat-belt, and why Saab jet fighters can turn supersonic circles inside an average sitting-room.
Do we think ahead? No, we don't: we simply emote. We exchange pieties. We feed ourselves on a media diet of what will happen to this poor asylum-seeker or that poor asylum-seeker if they're sent home. We've even created government agencies that are driven purely by emotion, and call them the Department of Justice, Equality, Law Reform and Women's Affairs, and the Equality Commission, meanwhile mismanaging even the most rudimentary affairs of government.
How is it possible that one fifth of all children in State care - over a thousand - are lone asylum-seekers? They're children, they arrived here without their families, and yet they managed to get past passport control - how? - and then they're in.
That's it. Next, they're each given €119 per week, which is about the annual wage in Burkina Faso, and remain largely unsupervised: just one social worker per 42 children. Furthermore, imagine the political storm if any attempt were made to send them home. And once they are given rights of residence, will their families be allowed to follow? So how did this insanity come about? Moreover, uniquely - that I know of - we have created a legal minority without defining it, called "Traveller". Every local authority in the land is legally obliged to supply homes and parking bays for these people, as the State busily generates among them the expectation that its job is to feed, clothe and house them.
Why on earth shouldn't the millions of Roma people in Eastern Europe avail of this provision? Are they not Travellers too? And by God they'll Travel here by the thousand to prove it, once they learn of the special status we give to a minority who are not defined in law, but are entirely self-proclaimed. What's more, we have the Equality Agency poised and ready to pounce if any of its commissars detect inequality of treatment for these Romas, now rechristened Travellers.
Look how we prepared for "asylum-seekers": emotively, of course. (Our new European visitors, of course, will not have to "seek" anything: they'll come here and they'll find, as of right.) The State paid €3.5 million for the 33-bedroom Lynch's Hotel in Macroom 18 months ago, for use as a hostel: more expensive than the vast majority of Irish houses. Another million has been spent on security; and not a single asylum-seeking head has yet touched a pillow. The Devereux Hotel in Rosslare: bought for €2.74 million before auction, maintenance costs €453,000, and then sold for €1.86 million - total loss to the taxpayer: €1.3 million.
In all, €19 million were spent on properties for asylum-seekers and not one of these places has ever been used. Millions more went on maintenance. How is this possible? What civil servants make these insane property decisions? What happens to their careers thereafter? Are they promoted, as they certainly deserve to be, for is it not the duty of the public service to squander public money? This process of spending millions on hotels to house people who have entered Ireland illegally is farcical enough; but it's even more farcical that the properties were purchased without the Government buyers discovering their market value through auction, or enquiring if the projects complied with our planning laws. No, instead, the State simply emoted financially, and then called the resulting waste "policy".
However, since this State is so flush with cash and is clearly run by people with such sparkling business acumen, let me confess to having a garden shed that would make a perfectly splendid hostel: a snip at a million. When it's found to be unsuitable, I'll generously take it off the Government's hands for €3 and some old Green Shield stamps. Heart of gold, that's me.
The new member-states of the EU complain that the almost universal restriction on welfare rights in existing member countries makes them second-class citizens of the Union. They're right. They are second-class citizens. There's no point in pretending otherwise. It's terribly sad and unjust, but history has made them that way. Western Europe built welfare states as the safety net for the unemployed few. But for citizens of former Communist countries, life on state welfare in emoting old Ireland could well be the choice of the many.