Irish Freedom Party Leader Explains Why Ireland Should Leave the EU

Hermann Kelly, president of the Irish Freedom Party is interviewed on EpochTV’s 'American Thought Leaders' program, on Feb. 13, 2024. Screenshot/ Epoch TV

The Irish Freedom Party has strongly advocated for Ireland’s exit from the European Union since its inception, according to Hermann Kelly, the party’s president.

By leaving the EU, Ireland can become “a sovereign self-governing country” where the Irish people alone can decide their laws and budgets, control the country’s borders, and decide their own “destiny in this world,” Mr. Kelly said.

Among the EU’s policies that negatively affect Ireland, Mr. Kelly listed restrictions for farmers and fishermen, illegal immigration, repression of free speech, and some “woke” policies.

Restrictions on Farmers

Farmers have done quite well for several decades since Ireland joined the EU 50 years ago, but the EU’s policies targeting climate change would lead to “the destruction of rural Ireland and the farming economy,” according to Mr. Kelly.

At a certain point, there was talk about culling 200,000 cattle in Ireland, which is a huge portion of the national herd, to meet carbon emission targets, he explained.

In June 2023, Irish Parliament members held a debate on culling the national herd after media reported on internal government documents recommending culling nearly 200,000 cows over a three-year period as part of climate-related efforts.

A spokesperson for Ireland’s agriculture department said that those documents were only “modeling documents” and were not “a final policy decision,” according to a freedom of information request published in July 2023.

Irish Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue told the Irish Parliament that the department did not propose to cull the cattle, but the Irish government is working on policies to reduce carbon emissions in the agri-food sector by 25 percent by 2030.

In response to an EU parliamentary inquiry, EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski said in January that he was unaware of Ireland’s “alleged proposal” to cull 200,000 cows. However, he noted that “reducing livestock numbers could contribute to reducing emissions” and achieving the EU’s climate targets.

Mr. Kelly described the policies to reduce carbon emissions as “the new religion” and “watermelon politics of green on the outside, but really red on the inside.”

“This kind of Marxism under another name is extremely dangerous,” he said. “The Irish Freedom Party will stand up for rural Ireland and for farmers because there’s no future without farmers because there’s no food. We all know carbon dioxide is necessary for photosynthesis and plant growth. It’s not a poison. It’s not a pollutant. It’s necessary for life.”

Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” last year that carbon dioxide (CO2) is being treated as a poison and most people believe that CO2 is dangerous, but it is essential.

“This is a very strange pollutant; it’s essential for plant life,” he said. “The concentration of CO2 in your mouth is about 40,000 parts per million as opposed to 400 outside.”

A concentration of “5,000 is permitted on a space station,” he said.

“If you could get rid of 60 percent of the CO2 roughly, we'd all be dead,” Mr. Lindzen pointed out.

Restrictions on Fisheries

Irish fishermen catch only 15 percent of fish taken in Irish waters because of fishing quotas assigned by the EU, according to Mr. Kelly.

“Irish fishermen get a pittance of the fish caught in our own national waters,” he said.

According to EU rules, when an EU country exhausts its quota for a species, “it must close the fishery.”

Mr. McConalogue said at the end of 2021 at the Irish Parliament that Irish vessels take nearly 36 percent of fish by weight and nearly 39 percent by value from the Irish exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from the country’s coasts.

Pádraig MacLochlainn, the Sinn Féin TD (Teachta Dála, member of the Irish Parliament) for Donegal, explained that, according to government data for 2020, the Irish catch was worth nearly 251 million euros, accounting for 15 percent of the total 1.6 billion euros, which is the total value of fish taken from Irish waters by the entire EU fleet.

Fisherman Brian Cunningham is photographed on his boat 'The Bluefin' in the Irish Sea near Kilkeel, Northern Ireland, on Aug. 11, 2018. Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

Mass Immigration

In Ireland, illegal immigration has “a huge knock-on effect on the housing market” as Ireland is physically a small country, Mr. Kelly said.

“At the moment, in some counties, such as in the northwest of Ireland and Donegal, there are virtually no houses for people to buy or to rent because they are all stuffed full with people claiming to be asylum seekers [and] refugees,” he said.

Ireland’s population of 3.5 million inhabitants in 1986 has increased by 45 percent since then, reaching 5.1 million in 2022, according to census data collected every five years by the Irish government’s Central Statistics Office.

The data show that since 1996, with the exception of five years, more people have immigrated to Ireland than emigrated annually. It also shows that during the periods from 1996 to 2006 and from 2016 to 2022, the average yearly immigration surpassed the natural population growth.

Many young people who cannot buy a house or find a house to rent emigrate, according to Mr. Kelly.

“Our best-educated young people are emigrating to countries like Canada, America, and Australia,” he said.

Last year, 21,000 young Irish people emigrated to Australia, Mr. Kelly noted.

“At the same time, we’re taking a large number of unvetted people from places like Algeria, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, [who are] not the best educated,” he said.

“They are a drain on our financial resources, on our housing, on our welfare, on our medical services.”

A makeshift refugee and migrant camp outside the Irish government's International Protection Office, in Dublin, Ireland, on June 12, 2023. Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images

The number of working holiday visas granted by the Australian Department of Home Affairs to Irish citizens during the 12 months that ended on June 2023 more than doubled compared with the prior year period, according to an Australian government report.

Migration Institute of Australia CEO Helen Duncan told news.com.au in January that many Irish immigrants are “incredibly skilled” and that they can fill critical job shortages in Australia.

Irish Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys said in a statement that Ireland issued more than 270,000 Personal Public Service (PPS) numbers in 2023, nearly 9 percent more than during the prior year. The PPS number is used to access social welfare benefits, public services, and information. Yet only 24 percent of them were given to Irish nationals, 12 percent went to Ukrainians, and 9 percent went to Indian nationals.

This makes up almost an extra quarter of a million people looking for work, according to Mr. Kelly. Not all of them may remain residents, but if this influx continues for four to five years into the population of more than 5 million, “that’s a becomes a huge factor,’ he said.

He said that about 60 percent of people seeking asylum in Ireland have not come through the port of entry, and 70 percent of asylum claimants arriving at the Dublin Airport in Ireland say they had lost their passport or never had one.

Mr. Kelly blamed the EU’s open borders and the policy of free movement of people within the bloc for mass immigration to Ireland.

“The vast majority of people come into Ireland completely legally through EU open borders and free movement,” he said.

Free Speech Suppression

The Irish state is looking to enact a new bill that will restrict and penalize people for free speech, Mr. Kelly said.

In late 2022, Irish Minister for Justice Helen McEntee proposed a new bill to tackle hate crime and hate speech, according to a statement.

“The new legislation will criminalize any intentional or reckless communication or behavior that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or persons because they are associated with a protected characteristic,” the statement reads.

Offenders will face a fine, up to five years in prison, or both, the bill stipulates.

The new legislation was intended to replace the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act of 1989, which has been widely deemed ineffective because it led to only about 50 prosecutions in more than 30 years, according to the statement. The 2022 hate speech bill was “designed to be more effective in securing convictions.”

Ireland’s constitution states that all citizens are equal before the law, but this bill introduces “ protected characteristics,” which are state-identified categories of people given certain privileges over other citizens, Mr. Kelly explained.

The bill lists 10 characteristics of people who are protected against hate speech under the legislation, including race, skin color, religion, national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sexual orientation, and disability.

However, the hate speech bill lacks a definition of hatred, according to Mr. Kelly. A person may be contravening this law not only by exchanging academic ideas, transmitting ideas, words, or memes but also by simply having them in their possession, he said, calling the bill’s provisions “very subjective.”

Even possessing a meme without communicating or transmitting it can lead to imprisonment of up to five years because the bill does not define what hatred is, thus leaving the definition of hate crime “wide open to judicial interpretation,” he said.

“But that’s a problem because the judiciary are all appointed by the Irish government,” Mr. Kelly pointed out.

In her speech in 2023, Ms. McEntee said the bill has not sought to limit the definition of “hatred” beyond its ordinary and everyday meaning.

“Defining it further ... could risk prosecutions collapsing and victims being denied justice,” the justice minister said.

The Irish hate speech bill originated from the EU’s laws, particularly a European Council framework decision of 2008, Mr. Kelly said.

The framework decision provisioned using criminal law to combat “certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia.”

Recently, the EU enacted the Digital Services Act (DSA), which “puts large restrictions on the large tech companies,” Mr. Kelly said. The bill requires each member state to police and censor social media, he noted.

The DSA imposes stricter obligations on very large online platforms because they pose relatively higher “societal risks” due to their reach when disseminating “illegal and harmful content, including disinformation,” the European Parliament said in a statement.

The bill also stipulates that the EU Commission can require these platforms “to limit any urgent threats” for up to three months during a crisis, such as a public security or health threat.

Under the new law, very large platforms will be subject to independent audits and must allow authorities and vetted researchers access to their data and algorithms, according to a European Commission policy statement.

The Irish hate speech bill is even more extreme than the DSA because it criminalizes not only transmitting a meme but also possessing it, Mr. Kelly said.

Irish Freedom Party

The main objective of the Irish Freedom Party, led by Mr. Kelly, is “the re-establishment of the national independence and sovereignty of Ireland and the restoration of national democracy, through leaving the European Union,” according to the party’s website.

A RED C poll in January found that 3 percent of respondents would support “other parties,” directly mentioning smaller parties such as the Irish Freedom Party.

Irish Freedom Party candidates hold banners in Athlone, Ireland, on March 24, 2024. Screenshot/ Epoch TV

 The Green Party and Labour Party each have 4 percent in polls, but they have ministers in the Irish government, Mr. Kelly noted.

Even though the Irish Freedom Party does not have access to national media and was only recently founded in 2018, it put forward three candidates for the European Parliament election in June, as well as a number of candidates for the local elections, he said. The party also plans to field more candidates in Ireland’s parliamentary election in 2025.

Pollster RED C also reported in January that 66 percent of respondents “believe that Ireland has taken in too many refugees.” Due to the immigration issue, voters’ support started shifting from Sinn Féin, one of the three major Irish parties, to several smaller parties, including the Irish Freedom Party, the pollster said.