‘We need immigrants’ – FG junior minister

A FINE GAEL junior minister this week insisted that Ireland is not full and ‘we actually need more immigrants’.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill is the Fine Gael TD for Dún Laoghaire and Minister of State at the Department of Finance, with responsibility for financial services, credit unions and insurance.

The minister accepted that concerns among some voters about immigration will be a key issue during the next general election. But she believes most Irish people will agree that we need more skilled labour.

‘Irish people want to see people coming in here working,’ she said. ‘We don’t have enough people to meet demand in Ireland at the moment.

‘Even in my own area of insurance, one of the challenges we have is prices going up for [car] repairs because you can’t get panel beaters, for example. Things like that are now being included in the critical skills list. How are you going to get your car repaired if it’s been in a crash? It’s very practical. We need more skills, and we need more people,’ she said.

‘When you look at immigration in that context, jobs that need to be done and people available to do them, it’s very clear that we do need more people in Ireland and I think Irish people are very comfortable with that.

‘Ireland is not full… We need more people to get the jobs done. There are people who want to work and there are jobs that need filling,’ Ms Carroll MacNeill added.

Asked about increasing talk about immigration, particularly in middle-class circles, she said: ‘It’s being talked about in very general terms. People might say “I’m against that” but against what exactly? We are not against people fleeing Ukraine. We want to provide support.’

She agreed that ‘Yes, we’ve changed the rules from being a system that was a slight outlier in Europe to being more aligned with our European partners.’