THIS WEEK HAS seen the launch of a new political party and the re-emergence of a controversial activist and former election candidate, after several years out of public life.
Justin Barrett, leader of the National Party, conducted his first interview in years on Thursday, when he was invited on to Today FM’s the Last Word.
The interview was unusually full of factual claims, so we decided to do a bit of an overview, especially after readers got in touch with us on Twitter about it.
We’ve chosen the four most substantive and concrete claims made by Barrett during the interview, and will present a tally of verdicts at the end, as we have done previously.
FactCheck asked Justin Barrett for evidence in support of his claims, but he did not respond.
You can download a spreadsheet with all the relevant data, below.
(Send your FactCheck requests to factcheck@thejournal.ie, tweet @TJ_FactCheck, or send us a DM).
Claim 1: Since EU expansion in 2004, there was immigration of 837,000 from Eastern European countries.
…You asked me for a figure of how many people I believed might come from Eastern Europe, prior to the accession countries.
And I said – given the numbers of people that are available to come – we could be talking about half a million to a million…We got 837,000. 837,000, by CSO figures.
The Facts
Before May 2004, the EU had 15 member states. After 2004, the following countries became EU member states, bringing the total to 28.
It is these 13 countries that Barrett is referring to.
1 May 2004: Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia
1 January 2007: Bulgaria, Romania
1 July 2013: Croatia
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has tracked immigration from these 13 countries, as a group, since 2005, under the label “EU15 to EU28 states”. We’ll be referring to them as “EU 15-28 countries”.
As of April 2016, there are now 238,700 citizens of these member states resident in Ireland.
Since 2005, there has been total immigration into Ireland of 292,100 by citizens of these EU 15-28 countries.
This means, even on a literal interpretation, Justin Barrett’s claim “We got 837,000″ is almost three times larger than the reality.
But this doesn’t take into account emigration from Ireland by citizens of these countries, which totals 121,100 since 2005.
This means net inward migration from (roughly speaking) Eastern and Central Europe, has been 171,000 – almost five times less than Barrett’s figure of 837,000.
The claim is FALSE by a very wide margin.
Claim 2: The same number of immigrants arrived from Eastern Europe into the UK as arrived into Ireland, since 2004
The same number of immigrants arrived from Eastern Europe into the entire UK, with a population of 50 million. About 800,000.
The Facts
For the sake of robust comparison, let’s compare the figures for Ireland and the UK between 2005 and 2015.
(The CSO doesn’t give figures for EU 15-28 countries before 2005, and the UK Office of National Statistics does not give comparable figures for 2016 so far).
Between 2005 and 2015:
On a literal interpretation, (“the same number arrived“), the total arrivals into the UK were 3.6 times greater than into Ireland.
This means net inward migration into the UK has been 3.8 times higher than into Ireland.
So whether the claim is evaluated based only on arrivals, or taking into account departures, it is FALSE by a very wide margin.
Claim 3: If, as a share of overall population, the same proportion of EU 15-28 immigrants had arrived in the UK as arrived in Ireland, the UK would have seen immigration of 6.5 million from those countries.
…If they [the UK] had taken, proportionately, the same number [of Eastern European, post-2004 immigrants] as us, they’d have taken 6.5 million.
The Facts
This is a slightly awkward one to calculate, as Barrett’s claim involves counting migration as a proportion of population.
But migration is a measure of change in population, so this is not a calculation you would normally make.
Nonetheless, we calculated total immigration and net immigration into Ireland by EU 15-28 citizens each year between 2005 and 2015.
We then took those figures as a percentage of the overall population each year.
Finally, we applied those percentages to the UK population each year between 2005 and 2015, and found:
Both these figures are clearly vastly smaller than the 6.5 million put forward by Justin Barrett. So his claim is FALSE by a wide margin.
However, it is worth noting that these figures are 3.8 times higher than the immigration and net immigration into the UK that actually took place, from these countries.
Which indicates that, in reference to overall population, Ireland did see significantly higher immigration from these countries than the UK did, from 2005-2015.
Claim 4: There is no proper vetting of refugees entering Ireland, including those coming from Syria
…There’s no proper vetting process for the entry of refugees from Syria, for example.
The Facts
In response to a query from FactCheck, the Department of Justice provided the vetting procedures for refugees entering Ireland from various countries, including Syria. The Irish Refugee Protection Programme has two parts:
Under both strands of our refugee policy, the following vetting and monitoring procedures are in place: Before departure -
After arrival, before entering the community
After entering the community
Justin Barrett’s claim is FALSE.
Of the four claims:
To download a spreadsheet containing all the relevant data, click here.
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