> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thegist.ie/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Gist: What if? - URL: https://www.thegist.ie/the-gist-what-if/ - Published: 2026-09-19T09:53:41.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-19T10:24:46.000Z - Description: The Government wants to reduce immigration. This is the Gist. - Author: Simon McGarr - Tags: Ireland What if... What if the November 2023 Dublin riot had never happened? What if Elon Musk had not bought Twitter by mistake and then turned it into a far-right propaganda machine? What if the Tech billionaires hadn't spent all of the COVID years in a WhatsApp group, collectively railing at society's audacity at impeding their whims, even a little bit, and gradually determining to destroy society so it couldn't happen again? What if our political-media class didn't become mesmerised by the false belief that the path to power lay though making the lives of foreigners worse? What if, in other words, we were not living like medieval peasants, at the mercy of entire strata of unrestrained blithering idiots granted power without ability. Well, that would all be nice, if true. Unfortunately, as the past fortnight has shown, that isn't the world we live in. Our political system was tuned over decades on the slow daily feedback loop of newspapers and set news broadcasts to respond to the expressions of public will that could persist through the layers of editorial and commercial gatekeeping. In particular, Ireland's system, due to its voting model and the small size of the population, allowed politicians to quickly work out what the public wanted. It might not always give them it, but it did know what was popular and what wasn't. But drop unceasing social messaging onto that same system, tuned like a spider's web to pick up bare vibrations from the furthest edge, and it's like tearing that same web with a broomstick. The signal is interpreted as so strong as to be an emergency, a crisis. But it's a crisis that doesn't abate, because it keeps blaring even after steps have been taken towards meeting its demands. Except, it is nothing of the sort. The politicians have become like Nipper, the loyal Jack Russell dog, listening intently to the automatic, unending and completely synthetic version of His Master's Voice. ![Oil painting of Nipper, a terrier dog with his head cocked looking into the horn of a gramophone. ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/09/2e/092e59c2-d4b3-46c9-8790-ebfcb2a9bda5/content/images/2026/09/Screenshot-2026-09-19-at-10.14.55.png) Let's see what the public are saying on X The consequences for this are severe. When the department store managers can't tell the difference between the customers and the shop dummies, whoever can arrange the most shop dummies can make it appear that a product, or a policy, is a hit or a flop. Which leads us seamlessly to Jim O'Callaghan. The Minister for Justice announced he loved seeing the joy of new citizens at the swearing in ceremonies and also he wanted to urgently put a stop to it. The stated reasons for stretching the citizenship requirements out by additional years were opaque to the point of incoherence. That's because the actual reason for it was so clear, nobody even bothered to invent a plausible cover story. The government, and Fianna Fáil, was making its pitch to the shop dummies it has mistaken for the general public to meet their wax cylinder demands to make life harder for foreigners. This is a stupid policy, obviously. Quite apart from the fact that the people who reside and work in Ireland for years are doing exactly what the Government has always wanted from Good Immigration. What this shows us is that now, even in their own economically reductive system, they're not willing to acknowledge there is any such thing as a good immigrant. This policy, without doubt, would be one of the most self-defeating and self-destructive that Ireland, in particular, could take. It would rival DeValera's Economic War and protectionism of the 1930s-1950s for sheer bladed self-denosing. In 2021 [the CSO projected an economic demographic](https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/technical-working-paper-1-population-and-labour-force-projections.pdf?ref=thegist.ie) crisis as the number of older people increased and the number of working people supporting them fell. However, that crisis was largely projected on what turned out to be wild underestimates of Ireland's likely net migration. Migrants are overwhelmingly more likely to be of working age or younger. Where the CSO had projected net migration of between 10,000 and 30,000 per year, Ireland has benefited from an unforeseen safety net of net migration between 48,000-93,000 per year. The shops are open, the hospitals are staffed, the restaurants are producing tasty food, the mushrooms are being picked and the universities are attracting talent. And, socially, stagnation is avoided in favour of change, horizons are broadening and schools that would have shut continue to educate children. And this is what we want to dissuade? And all because of the tiny number of men (overwhelmingly) who are assembling crowds of baying shop dummies, screaming that they are The Master's Voice. All of them demanding hostility first and reasoning not at all when it comes to anyone, Irish born or not, who might have a complexion darker than that of a peeled potato. In fact, for this army of mannequins and their dummy owners, to be Black and to be Irish is the greatest affront and standing refutation of their abject racism. And so, our Minister for Justice has acted to protect their feelings by delaying, obstructing and trying to dissuade people of all shades from obtaining the citizenship we are so blessedly lucky they still want. In response, those of us who are the actual voters can only say clearly, at every turn and in every available outlet, that a healthy, welcoming and self-assured Ireland is one that has more Black Irish people and far fewer dogs listening to His Master's Voice.