While Department of Justice mandarins work on the double to embargo the names of companies and foreign bodies that benefited from a multimillion-euro visa scam that granted access to Ireland and by extension the UK and EU, questions must now be asked as to a looming security crisis triggered by the State’s blindeye visa policies.
Plagued by money laundering concerns and accusations of abuse by a variety of bad actors the DOJ’s Immigrant Investor Programme (IIP) was shuttered in 2023. Offering residency to non-EU citizens for investments or philanthropic gifts in the hundreds of millions, while marketed originally at Americans the scheme evolved to be disproportionately dominated by high net-worth Chinese individuals.
As of 2021, an estimated 1,110 Chinese nationals had availed of the scheme with the IIP becoming central in developing Sino-Hiberno relations in the pre-COVID years.
Earning a certain degree of disdain among the Atlantic-facing business community in Dublin, worsening relations between D.C. and Beijing, as well as a string of espionage scandals related to Confucius Institutes and Huawei technology, punctured much of the economic goodwill that went into the creation of the scheme.
Indeed, the presence of the CCP-funded Confucius Institute on the University College Dublin (UCD) campus is regarded by many academic and business insiders as a crisis waiting to happen owing in large part to the sheer scale of Chinese state actors snooping in on the university-adjacent business community.
Seldom standing up for free speech and expression when it comes to domestic culture wars on campus, several left-leaning professors warned of the impending threat to academic freedom amid attempts to ‘internationalise’ education via the CCP-backed institutes. Attempts by the Technological University Dublin (TUD) to develop ties with their Beijing equivalent – the Harbin Institute for Technology – was pilloried by the U.S Embassy in Dublin amid warnings of the institute’s ties with acquiring Chinese military software.
Whatever about the rights or wrongs of the Chinese footprint, Dublin is invariably to be swept along with the gradual economic decoupling from the Asian State courtesy of our economic dependency on Silicon Valley and Trump’s protectionist America raising the likelihood of CCP meddling in the State being under the microscope.
Not only with China scant real attention was paid to the case of Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, a Russian spy who operated in Dublin under the cover of being a Brazilian language Trinity student when he was rumbled trying to infiltrate the International Criminal Court (ICC) by Dutch intelligence.
The same could equally be said of Gulf states and even Islamist interests that operated effectively unimpeded in Dublin due to a murky NGO sector and threadbare migration screening process.
Ditto the mysterious case of Agent ‘Cobalt’ the Irish Senator turned alleged Russian influence agent whose ego, libido and trips abroad made him vulnerable to a honeytrap/blackmail operation by Moscow. While the case may be more an example of a lack of indigenous media sources with the Irish-version of the British Sunday Times ‘breaking’ this seemingly innocuous story – to further the narrative of a fifth column on London’s western flank – but nevertheless forcing Dublin to better equip itself to penetrate foreign intel operations within the apparatus of democratic politics in the State.
The revelation of Chinese firm Hikvision installing security cameras in Leinster House might make other Oireachtas members fearful of being the next Chinese version of Cobalt.
Dublin’s soft touch to clamping down on non-Western actors in part through our visa service came to international media attention in March of last year when the Republic’s exposure to Beijing was contrasted to its equal reliance on the United States.
A perennial stomping ground for MI5, a string of irony of the next decade could be the Republic of Ireland being dragged rightwards by NATO, Brussels, or DC on migration and tightening up its visa system as the realities of a new combative multipolar order are known.
Amid a supposed formalising of Irish security services, even the centre cannot ignore the necessity to close the barnyard doors on the visa process lest a few sloppy decisions at the DoJ leave Ireland Inc. with a serious and irrecoverable egg on its face.
I barely understand the issues – trying to learn – but how ironic in light of our history that Ireland has become quite a hot property in the world – except, of course, for the native Irish.
Somebody would need to translate that for me to understand it properly. I’m getting the picture that if Ireland was a home then the parents would allow in strangers for a lot of money and the strangers would take over the home, abuse the family and also spy on everyone in their county.
☘
Is Leinster’s House Of Cads finally collapsing.?…. not before it’s time.
Some years ago articles like this appeared in the tricolour and the Burkean, and OMG they have magically appeared now, once again, so what has changed,since then…the House of Disrepute is still running.
Years before those same articles appeared, a book was published about the CCPs infiltration of Australian Universities,involving Chinese students,students unions,Chinese Embassies and Consulates,the feed back to the CCP in China. The organisation was so influential that it set the curriculum and subjects at the university, thus relaying the latest,most up to date information and experimentation on results that were passed on to the Chinese Military by the CCP, compliments of the Chinese students who were contracted to do so, or forfeit their overseas postings if they refused. Australian Politicians who were Honey Trapped by their CCP Masters were also Named and Shamed in this book.
ASIO, the Australian Spy Agency come security apparatus was later targeted by a famous Chinese business,on a new development requiring cameras and wiring,but luckily the contract was canceled in time.
Should we be surprised by this CCP IRISH HONEYPOT LATEST, NO !
Not when you’ve scattered Irish Passports, Visas and PPS numbers around the globe like confetti,
Not when you’ve facilitated criminals by setting up online applications,
Not when you’ve forecasted and promoted a NO CAP ON MIGRATION,
Not when you’ve sent the message out globally in 8 ethnic languages,
Not when you’ve allowed unvetted migrants to board a plane,destroy if any documentation, STAY in Ireland, and YEARS LATER blame the airline carriers,
Not when you’ve offered Chinese business investors massive acreage of Irish Land for them to set up the new Chinese Colonies of the CCP,
And not when you’ve contracted ethnic Irish DNA from a north Dublin hospital to China, who then becomes the sole owner of ethnic Irish DNA.
WHY, WHY, WHAT FOR…WHAT NEXT, WHATS THEIR LIMITS?
Josie, you got it right in one, you nailed it on the head. The comparison and absurdity that they will use YOUR HOUSE ( Ireland ) but not their house ( Leinster ) because that is their house of business,their cartel, and do they care about you, about us ?….No, the show must go on, Lierland ☘
I was extremly surprised over a decade ago as a post-graduate student when I discovered that a significant section of my cohort who were non-nationals did not share my passion for the subject. Many of them had little interest in it at all. The penny dropped somewhere down the line.
Education visas are a pathway to obtaining work and residence permits – from the language schools to the universities. We are also told that Irish universities attract the best talent internationally. This is untrue. Foreign nationals can study at graduate level here with relatively poor GPAs. The admission standards are purposely set low. When stories about “visa abuse” appear in the media there is feigned shock. The truth is that everyone knows the score and is happy with the situation.