IRELAND

Ireland is doing Ireland things, but it's Ireland so they've very much earned the right to be Irish. Ireland is no stranger to crisis and unrest, and right now is no different. There have been large-scale protests in Ireland involving people taking heavy machinery to the streets to block roadways and oil ports and stuff like that, grinding a lot of the country to a halt and causing a general ruckus. Why are they doing this? Fuel prices. And a bunch of others. There's a lot here. Let's start to unpack. Fuel prices have been spiking in Ireland as they've been doing everywhere, but in Ireland, they've also had some tax increases, and then also now a carbon tax that's impending that's got people being like, "Hey, this is completely unaffordable." The history of Ireland is one of unrest and meddling in general. The UK famously was fucking around in Ireland and caused it to kind of become two of them, two Ires per land. So you have a populace whose identity is rooted in not wanting foreign meddling again. There's also a housing crisis going on. Irish property: the boom that shows no signs of slowing. Affordability of the housing market in Ireland is trash, just like a lot of the EU, but in Ireland specifically, there was a period of massive growth between like 1995 and 2005. It was called the "Celtic Tiger". During this time, the Irish government invested a whole lot in socially subsidized housing. and they were generally affordable. And then they stopped doing that. When the economy got real bad. there was this little thing called the financial crisis. It was a financial crisis. Kinda fucked us up. of Ireland was like, "How do we save money?" I know, austerity. We're just gonna not do stuff and also increase taxes, but also, also we're gonna switch to a private first housing market, just like the US. Famously affordable. And so Ireland went from building a bunch of socially subsidized housing to a primarily private market with "requirements" build subsidized housing, but subsidized housing dropped by "About two-thirds of all the social housing that we built in the history of the state is now in private hands. That's it. That's the whole story." - Dara Turnbull research coordinator at Housing Europe like 90% after that. Shocker. When you switch to a for-profit housing model, it becomes expensive. There's another angle of this too, and that's immigration. If you look around the world, you'll notice that there's a handful of massive humanitarian crises. Turns out having multiple humanitarian crises creates refugees and immigrants, and they go places. So a lot of European countries immigrants from various crises, and Ireland is no different. Non-EU Citizen Immigration to Ireland via europa.eu Ireland has taken in a lot. That's undeniable. And so here in Ireland, you've got unrest over the fuel prices and the taxes and whatnot. You've got a housing economy that is just unworkable for the average person. and then you have a ton of migration, and that creates a hotbed for right-wing opportunists to be like, "Hey! those immigrants are causing your problems." Three new anti-immigrant parties have registered to stand in Irish elections but who are they? The Journal several white nationalist and self-described neo-Nazi groups in Ireland vying for more political power during this moment, using this crisis to get people on their side. It's gross, but thankfully. Ireland is pretty resilient from having people in the most fringe areas of politics get lifted up in two seats of power. At the end of the day, the people of Ireland are tired, and they've got a right to be so. I think we're all pretty tired. but after spending quite on Irish history, y'all definitely have the right to be tired. Irish Times talked about Irish public 'emotionally checking out' after succession of crises The Irish Times how there is a growing sense of disaffection in the country, and people are just checked out emotionally from just crisis after crisis after crisis. It's gone from like, "Oh my God, we need to react!" Oh, it's a crisis, yeah, that's standard. What's for dinner? The good news is has already responded a little bit. Irish PM announces €505m in fuel-cost measures after days of protests BBC It hasn't quelled the protests and made everybody happy. little bit of work to be like, "Hey, we're gonna tamp down on those taxes for a bit, try to make things slightly more affordable." It's not enough. Hopefully there'll be more. Hang in there, folks of Ireland. Solidarity.