Worse Than Stormfront

1. You were wrong about the number of PPS numbers issued for the first two moths of this year. I pointed this out
to you and you said “You’re right, it was a mistake and I’m grateful that you spotted it and set me straight.”

2. You were wrong when you said that we have an open-borders policy. We don’t. We allow EU citizens to work and
live here but that in no way constitutes an “open-borders policy”.

3. You were wrong to say that “the population of the republic of Ireland is expected to reach 12 million by 2058”.
This is simply not true. Who expects this to happen? On what basis do they make this prediction and where was it
published? Did the reporter see your Excel document? Your source for this claim was an Irish Independent article
that said “The study — dubbed ‘Twice the Size — Engineering the Future of Irish Gateway Cities’ — warned that
Ireland has badly underestimated growth over recent years, with Ireland expected to reach a population of eight million by 2033 and 12 million by 2058.” It’s quite clear that the journalist made a balls of reading the report. You surely understand this now, but are being deliberately obtuse. You hitched your wagon to very sloppy journalism and seem reluctant to admit your mistake. Without any supporting material the Independent article does not in itself qualify as a source. Do you seriously not understand what I’m saying? If you need me to explain the fundamentals of journalism to you I’m happy to do so (for a very reasonable hourly fee).
If you’d read the report in The Irish Times I think it’s less likely you would have erred so egregiously. “Urban Forum chairman Henk van der Kamp said the report, Twice the Size? Imagining the Future of Irish Gateways, was aimed at stimulating debate on planning for an island with population projections of eight million people in 25 years’ time and 12 million by 2058.” (IT 14/03/08 )

4. You were wrong when you claimed that the DCU President said that the Irish would be a minority by 2050. He
said no such thing. He quoted unaccredited and unpublished UK-based research to that effect as a starting-point for a speech. Do you understand the difference? I’m sorry to be patronising but you seem to have some difficulty with the notion. If, for example, YOU were to say that black people are mentally superior and will be running Ireland in 50 years time and then, subsequently I were to say to some of our friends on Eirenet, “Macmorris says that black people are mentally superior beings and will be running Ireland in 50 years time” I have quoted you. It would be wrong, I’m sure you can agree, to say that I made that prediction. In a similar way, your original
statement was simply wrong. He quite clearly did not say that we would be a minority by 2050, nor did he predict that we could be. He quoted the material and then said “Whether this turns out to be an accurate prediction or not, we have to prepare for a very different kind of society.”

5. You were wrong when you said that “nobody ever reported” the DCU President “as saying we would be a
minority.” You did so and admitted afterwards that this was a “mistake”.

6. You were wrong when you said that “The indigenous Irish made up 98% of the population of the Republic of
Ireland in 1998”. When corrected, you admitted “I was wrong when I said that the foreign population was 2%
back in 1998”. You were. By a very wide margin.

7. You were wrong when you said the percentage of Irish people in Ireland fell from “98% to maybe 86% in just ten years.” When I pointed this out you said “I admit it was wrong”.

8. When I gave you correct figures from the 1996 census you said “You are taking the piss. There’s no way the
numbers of foreigners in the country was that high back in 1996.” That was also wrong on your part. I wasn’t taking the piss. You went off and had a look and then wrote “I checked the census figures on the CSO website for
1996 and you’re right”.

9. You were wrong when you said “The fact is that we have too many people coming here.” That’s not a fact. It’s an opinion.

10. You were wrong to say that I used the expression “deliberate concerted government effort” but, more
importantly, you were wrong to suggest that I said, directly or indirectly, that the “population would never reach
that high because it would take a deliberate concerted government effort.’” What I wrote was that based on the
contents of the report, the population could not be said to be expected to reach that figure. I didn’t say that “the
population would never reach that high”. Can you understand the difference?

11. Not so much a factual error, but you were wrong to bring up entirely irrelevant comparisons with Britain. In
response I said “I don’t care how many immigrants Britain get” and you said “Well I do”. You then revised this opinion, saying “I was wrong to mention Britain in the first place.”