The headlines about last Sunday’s Swiss referendum on immigration focused on how those opposed to the proposal of capping the size of the population at 10 million had a comfortable win. But the remarkable thing was not that 55 per cent voted No. It was that 45 per cent of voters in a country that has built up extraordinary wealth over the years based in large part on its open policies – to a migrant workforce, trade and finance – voted Yes to a proposal that would have been likely, before long, to create significant economic cost.

It shows the force of the immigration debate sweeping across the industrialised world. And it is a debate that is already an important part of Irish politics, notwithstanding the absence to date of a big party with an anti-immigration agenda.

The right in Switzerland was, in all likelihood, denied a win only due to fears about the risks to the country’s links with the European Union, built on a 2000 referendum introducing a free movement agreement with the EU. Capping the population at 10 million, as the referendum proposed, would have threatened the free movement deal and Swiss access to the EU single market. It would have been like a kind of slow-motion Brexit-type vote.

The Swiss People’s Party, the key supporter of the referendum, has a long history of pushing anti-immigration policies. But this referendum was framed around pressure from migration on housing, transport, environment and the overall quality of life.

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Sound familiar? The pressure on areas such as housing and Ireland’s creaking infrastructure is........

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