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Roderic O’Gorman, Ireland’s controversial Minister for Children, has declared that his country must make preparations to allow in a large number of migrants supposedly fleeing from the effects of climate change.

While Ireland has already been pursuing a relatively open borders approach when it comes to the issue of Europe’s ongoing migrant crisis, the suggestion that it starts allowing climate migrants to stay in the country has shocked even some of the Irish government’s own ministers.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, O’Gorman emphasised that he believed that both Ireland and Europe at large will see a significant rise in the number of asylum seekers over the coming years, declaring that the country must now start making preparations to allow in climate migrants.

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He went on to say that he “would like to see” climate migrants become a self-defined category within the asylum process, but that such arrangements would need to be made at an international level.

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However, suggestions that the country should begin taking in climate refugees on top of this influx have shocked even some of those within Ireland’s pro-open borders government, with many outside the Irish Green Party saying that the country simply does not have the capability to deal with the additional influx.

“It is making policy on the hoof, and introducing an entire new category of person entitled to international protection,” one government MP, Charlie Flanagan, remarked, adding that the suggestion was far outside the coalition agreement for government.

“It comes at a time during which we are struggling to cope with the numbers of people coming into the country, either as refugees from Ukraine or seeking international protection,” he went on to say.

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