What Happened and What’s Next?
Right-wing condemnation abounded online this week upon news of the signing of a new cooperation agreement between the EU and India with explicit mention of steaming migration between Europe and the subcontinent.
In the works for over twenty years,the “Comprehensive Framework of Cooperation on Mobility” between Brussels and New Delhi crossed the line and is heading to formal approval thanks to protectionist fears from the United States and China likely to become operational in 2027.
Requiring a majority vote in the European Parliament and a “qualified majority” (55% of member states with 65% of total EU population) before the end of 2026, the lack of a visible opposing sectional interest has made the passing of the agreement a likely cake walk.
India has no beef to export to elicit protests from Irish farmers and the politically networked agri-business lobby with an attention span already taken up by Mercosur. The Indian economy is hungry for digital goods, pharmaceuticals all of which can and will be manufactured by multinationals in Ireland.
India has an active business community enmeshed within Western power structures with migration from the Subcontinent specifically from the Indian middle classes marketed as more governable and beneficial than alternatives from Africa and the Middle East.
In short Ireland sells what India lacks; Mercosur sells what Ireland produces.
Following last week’s signing and ahead of final approval likely by the end of 2026 the Irish Departments of Enterprise, Justice, Further and Higher Education, and Housing enter a coordination phase with the Commission on what next.
The respective departments are now likely tinkering around with capacity management: anticipating higher volumes of permit and visa applications, managing backlogs, and stress-testing housing and local service impacts in likely destination areas.
The Migration Risk
Despite the posturing by Eurosceptics and EU Commission alike Ireland retains full legal control over visas and employment permits. Under the agreement signed last week, the European Legal Gateway Office will be established as “as a one‑stop hub to provide information and support the movement of workers, starting with the ICT sector.”
In essence Brussels is greasing the wheel and creating enhanced opportunities for Indians to make their way to Europe through facilitation, with Ireland being an anglophone tech hub a prime end destination.
Already numbering just short of 100,000 Indian migration to Ireland is heavily concentrated in ICT, data, pharma, and professional services. This makes inflows more economically useful but also more socially legible to average punters.
Bulk buying of housing supply by Indians in Dublin and regional hubs is a recent phenomenon heightened by post-Brexit UK’s descent into further migration madness under Boriswave changes.
To reiterate the deal does not alter Irish visa law or transfer competence to the EU. Its effect is indirect: EU-level mobility frameworks, skills dialogues, and the Indian Legal Gateway increase structured demand for legal pathways into Member States that are already attractive. Ireland sits high on that preference curve.
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment sets the economic gate by defining shortage occupations, salary thresholds, and employment permit eligibility; its decisions determine who can apply.
The Department of Justice then carries the operational burden, issuing visas and residence permissions, managing renewals and family reunification, and absorbing enforcement and litigation risk as volumes rise.
Meanwhile, the Department of Further and Higher Education functions as a multiplier: Indian student inflows and post-study work pathways convert education policy into long-term migration stock. None of these departments controls overall numbers; each acts sequentially, with capacity and processing speed quietly shaping outcomes.
Replying to email inquiries from the Burkean neither the Department of Justice or Enterprise confirmed that they were pursuing measures to augment the flow of India passport holders into Ireland under the agreement though as reported in this publication Irish ministers are keen to scout the subcontinent for student labour and territory education.
What Can be Done?
The blunt truth that the passing of this deal is a foregone conclusion thanks to multipolarity and the transformation of the EU into a geopolitical bloc required to deleverage from China, Russia and the United States.
A reckless surge in mass migration caused by sloppy interdepartmental management and naivety about the scale of Indian labour flows into an anglophone Irish Republic is not.
The Department of Enterprise can pre-commit to narrow shortage occupation lists and maintain or raise salary thresholds, shaping expectations abroad before application volumes surge.
For student work rules merely adjusting graduate permission duration, employer sponsorship requirements, or salary floors reduces long-term stock growth while preserving education exports heavily mitigates the ease by which Indians can enter the labour market.
Oireachtas members through committees on Enterprise, Justice, Housing, and Public Expenditure can press for an administrative link between permit volumes and verified housing supply, forcing cross-departmental realism rather than siloed approvals.
TDs and Senators can require departments to publish rolling quarterly data combining new permits issued and the impact on housing etc.
Participation in EU mobility pilots tied with the agreement (primarily the Legal Gateway arrangement) is voluntary in practice; Ireland can limit scope, sectors, or intake timing without opting out politically.
Conclusion: The Capacity Argument
Three years after East Wall and days after even the WEF at Davos declared era of mass migration to be ending Irish institutions still talk about migration in moral or economic abstractions (“skills”, “diversity”, “global Ireland”). That language is gasoline in an angry environment like today.
Once migration is framed as a bounded administrative system rather than a moral absolute, control becomes legitimate.
EU agreements are politically untouchable and legally dense; throughput is neither. Migration control in Ireland is exercised through permit criteria, processing speed, compliance intensity, and renewal scrutiny, all forums which the NGO complex has mastered.
The goal is not to spiral into putty signaling about ethnostates but to normalise the sentence: “Migration continues for now, but within hard, published capacity limits.” Whoever establishes that baseline left, right or centre in Irish politics wins the argument and opens space down the line.
In Ireland’s case, migration is not an on–off switch pulled in Brussels or the Dáil; it is a web of thresholds, processing speeds, incentives, and capacity constraints that can be adjusted by actors who understand institutions and are willing to work inside them like NGO have done,
Better the Divil ye know bollix.
The Irish Nongovernment NGO COALITION has been way ahead of the EU in terms of the replantation of the ethnic Irish race by at least a decade…visas,permits and free travel /accom, including guarenteed jobs and subsadised govt.backing for mortgage and bank loan approvals.
Having surpassed their fellow asian cousins in terms of the largest population,they have by stelth sneaked in with their claim to democratic process.China and Russia being the distraction of westerners for a decade.
They are everywhere now,in govts.media,broadcasting and the frustrating end of every phone inquirey globally.
They also have demonstrated their capability to perform U TURNS, check their history with pacific nations and most recently Russia and China coalition bloc against USA.
OH YEAH, I did comment in the previous article about Gaza/Galway…this though will be classified as friendly ethnic cleansing and the Irish People will get the real taste of an Indian
Caste System,imported by an Irish Class Mob