One thing is for sure: Peter O’Loughlin is no Nigel Farage.
While the Ukip leader is known for his bombastic anti-Europe, anti-immigrant speeches, the 29-year-old spokesperson for Ireland’s new National Independent Party (NIP) is diffident, almost painfully self-aware.
And whereas the groundswell of support for Farage’s party in the UK has worried that country’s political establishment, the NIP only has about 100 members so far.
But with European and local elections looming just a few months away, O’Loughlin hopes to strike a chord with his Limerick-based party’s message: it’s time to leave the euro, turn away economic migrants, and end all of this austerity that’s going around.
Still, it’s difficult for any new party to go mainstream in Ireland, especially those with an anti-immigrant flavour and no high-profile leaders, says Piaras Mac Éinrí, a social scientist and migration expert at University College Cork who is sceptical that the NIP will make inroads.
Indeed, there’s little to indicate that the NIP won’t go the same way as the right-wing Immigration Control Platform, set up more than a decade ago and still “very little more than a website”, he says.
Even if there is currently a “huge mood of disillusionment” with established political parties, “you’d have to show that the dissatisfaction people have would have to be channelled into an anti-immigrant position,” says Mac Éinrí. “And there’s no evidence of that.”
The main motivation for the NIP, which was officially launched in Dublin on 14 January, is “the state of pretty much everything in Ireland,” according to O’Loughlin, who plans to run for Ireland’s South constituency in the European elections.
“It’s the style of Government, really; the disconnect, the lack of accountability,” he says. As such, his party’s draft manifesto sets out a raft of policies, from the nationalisation of banks to the development of Ireland’s potential in motor sports.
But it’s the proposal of a three-year freeze on “economic migration” that has attracted the most comment.
The ban would affect low-skilled workers, says O’Loughlin, who trained as a primary school teacher. “If there is a company, or any employer at all, in this country who want to hire somebody and they can’t find the necessary skills in Ireland, then there’s no issue, go abroad.”
The policy is meant to stop immigrants competing with unemployed Irish workers for jobs and prevent any “social problems” in the future in Ireland, he says, criticising the current “mass immigration” and “multicultural experiment”.
An estimated 12 per cent of the population are not Irish citizens, according to Government figures. You can’t just “shove two cultures together… You need gradual integration, that’s how it works,
” says O’Loughlin, who has a habit of referring to the history of the Napoleonic era to back up his arguments.
The other proposal to attract attention is the party’s desire to dump the euro. “It’s a straight-jacket, it simply limits the ability of the individual economies to recover,” says the NIP man, who adds that “anti-democratic” Europe needs a makeover to end Brussels’ “interference in certain aspects of law” such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
“The CAP itself doesn’t benefit us,” he says. “We’d be far better simply growing and exporting.”
The NIP has already come under attack for its immigration policies from the leftist Anti-Austerity Alliance, which has accused the party of “playing the race card” to win votes.
But O’Loughlin denies that there is anything racist about NIP proposals; it’s more about sovereignty and numbers, he claims.
Besides, he says he understands the impulse to emigrate and would love “to go teach kids and travel the world” but feels a duty and a drive to try to help out his home country.
“This way, if I do fail, if I crash and burn, I can go off with a clear conscience,” he smiles. “Fingers crossed we do well. And if we don’t… I’m going to Japan.”
