Following the gruesome knife attack in Belfast last week, the authorities on both sides of the border quickly established that the suspect, a Sudanese man called Hadi Alodid, had entered the North from Dublin. 

He’d already passed through another safe country, France, on his way here in 2023, before he took a bus to Belfast in February of that year.

Predictably enough, that kicked off howls of outrage from certain British politicians, complaining about the porous border and demanding that the Irish authorities review and tighten controls. 

Given that there are some 300 roads crossing the border, that’s easier said than done. 

And pointing the finger at us ignores another inconvenient fact – porous borders tend to work both ways, and, as the Irish Mail on Sunday reported at the weekend, nine out of ten people who sought asylum here this year came from the UK via Belfast.

The open border is, of course, a key feature of the international peace treaty known as the Good Friday Agreement, but as a senior minister told the paper: ‘Unless we were to install proper border checks on roads crossing from Northern Ireland to the Republic, we could never really stem the flow of those coming from Britain to Northern Ireland and then travelling to Dublin to claim asylum.’

The border issue is, the minister said, ‘the elephant in the room of the immigration debate’.

To which you might reasonably reply, what immigration debate would that be?

When have you ever heard the topic of immigration being openly and calmly discussed in the Dáil or on the airwaves?

Only one narrative is permitted to be voiced or aired – immigration is great; immigrants are all highly skilled, hard-working, law-abiding citizens who can only enrich our society with their wonderfully diverse cultures; every community should be thrilled and honoured to welcome them into their midst; and anyone who says otherwise is a racist. Debate over.

At the weekend, Sinéad Gibney of the Social Democrats appeared on The Week In Politics to inform us that we are a racist society, we’re all racists at heart, and the rioting in Belfast after the near-beheading of a local man was ample proof of our bigoted, hateful, xenophobic ways.

She was not challenged about this serious slander on the people of a country that has welcomed far more than the European average of foreign-born residents – almost a quarter of those living in Ireland, at the last census, were born elsewhere. 

But we’re still all racists. Seriously, who votes for these people?

Our betters on the left have blamed social media for whipping up hysteria and racism by circulating these horrific images to people who are too dumb to process them responsibly.

Because ordinary folk are very stupid and malleable, and would never be the least bit outraged or concerned by an attempted beheading on a public street if Elon Musk didn’t tell them they ought to.

Now and then, in a rare discussion on radio or television, you’ll hear a brave commentator venturing to suggest that people might have reason for concerns about immigration. 

That’s usually enough to get you shouted down by the pure and pious in the ‘all immigrants are cuddly peaceniks, tragic victims or worthy professionals’ camp.

Because even acknowledging that concerns exist, even daring to admit apprehension about the effects of an influx of people from very different cultures into a society that’s been homogeneous for generations, is enough to prompt accusations of ‘hate speech’.

But decades of violence in the North should have taught us that where there’s injustice, and where people feel voiceless, and ignored, where they feel their rights and needs are secondary to those of others, where they feel their own way of life is under threat, then you get civil unrest.

People don’t riot and burn houses and buses because of something they saw online: they take to the streets when there is no other way to make themselves heard. And when even the merest hint of concern or dissent is likely to get you dubbed a hateful racist, well then, what have you got to lose?

Politicians and the media have got to offer people an alternative to heated protests and riots as a means of expressing legitimate concerns – in a functioning society where freedom of speech is valued and encouraged, that’s supposed to be their entire purpose.

But when you have a predominantly left-leaning media that is strongly disposed to preachy, finger-wagging moral superiority, where unapproved opinions are demonised and silenced rather than aired and debated, that’s partisan activism, not journalism.

And when you have a lack of true political leadership, but instead are governed by weak, shallow and cowardly people motivated by their own reputations, their social media ‘likes’ and the opinions of their pet commentators, there is nobody to challenge this smug consensus.

If there is no reason to be concerned about the levels of immigrant crime, for example, then why not encourage the recording of ethnicity and nationality in Garda statistics, rather than attempting to block and censor it?

Surely the best response to those who claim that certain cultures are more disposed towards stabbings and knife crimes is to produce the figures to prove them wrong?

Refusing to ask questions because you might not like the answers, refusing to listen to the public because you might not like their opinions, is a demonstrably failed experiment that has led to riots and chaos.

Having legitimate concerns about immigration is not racism. But suppressing the most fundamental of all human rights – freedom of speech – to advance your own political agenda is definitely fascism.