Ireland needs migrant workers, says Smith

People Before Profit TD and European candidate Bríd Smith says that Ireland needs migrant workers, and pointed out that James Connolly himself was a migrant worker from Scotland.

Smith held an anti-racism event at the James Connolly Memorial in Dublin on Thursday, and said that migrant workers were crucial to the functioning of Ireland.

She said she was concerned about the rise in racism promoted by “far-right individuals and groups in recent years,” and those workers need protection.

“I hosted the anti-racism event at the James Connolly Memorial because James Connolly himself was a migrant worker from Scotland who also subsequently emigrated to the United States. Connolly would have been a strong defender of immigrant workers in Ireland today and we invoked that spirit today.”

She stated that there are 50,000 migrant workers in the Irish health service, while there are 27,000 migrant workers in the construction industry, remarking “where would we be without them?”

Over 64,000 people left Ireland between April 2022 and April 2023, while 56,000 left Ireland in the same time period between April 2021 and April 2022.

“We need them all (migrant workers) to help build the homes we urgently need,” Smith said.

Smith is on the campaign trail for Europe, and said that should she be elected, she would “make the fight against racism and defence of migrant workers’ rights a key focus of my term.”

“We know the far-right is growing across Europe. We need strong anti-racist MEPs in the European Parliament to face the far-right there down, and that’s exactly what I would do”.