Nurturing of right-wing parties

Sir — Having analysed the poll about Irish people’s attitudes to migrants and refugees (Sunday Independent, February 26), it struck me that there is a constituency out there that might support an Irish ‘Populist’ party; with 24pc of poll respondents saying they would object to a refugee centre being sited in their community; and a massive 62pc of those polled being concerned that terrorists might arrive with any refugees being allowed in.

A Dail debate during the latter part of 2016 discussed a motion requiring Ireland to take in (an undisclosed number of ) refugees.

It was passed with an absence of dissenters in the chamber.

Surely there must be at least one person among all those TDs who might be seen to represent the substantial ‘minority’ of Irish people who might have apprehensions about Ireland being ‘swamped’ with migrants and who care about some possible severe future consequences for our indigenous population, as has happened with a next generation of migrants in other EU countries who harbour anti-nationalist views about the country that adopted them and showed their families succour.

The need to show absolute political correctness must frighten our present group of Irish politicians whom we have elected to represent us in the Oireachtas.

It should be noted that any native group which does not see itself as having elected politicians who will democratically represent them (as we have seen with the anti-water charge Independent TDs being successful in gaining Dail seats in recent national elections) will surely be set for nurturing some rightwing political movement similar to those that have been gaining traction across parts of the EU, eg France, Netherlands, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, etc. Tom Baldwin, Midleton, Co Cork