The Government needs to take leadership on the issue of migration, the Immigrant Council of Ireland has said. An Irish Times poll showed more than half of the electorate is opposed to allowing migrants fleeing North Africa to settle here. Chief executive Brian Killoran said this was a positive position that highlighted one in two people was willing to accept migrants.

“If you look around at the EU around the various attitudes towards migration, a lot of countries have taken a more negative slant on migration,” he said. “I think ours is quite positive. It shows the Irish public are seeing it as a humanitarian situation first of all.

“Nobody is suggesting a limitless process but that people are open to Ireland being very generous in this situation. If you do the poll elsewhere in EU, you would probably get a much more hardline stance.”

Asked if Ireland should offer to resettle migrants as part of an EU response to the problem in the Mediterranean, 52 per cent of voters said Ireland should not offer while 48 per cent said we should.

Mr Killoran said the poll showed that the public were ahead of the curve and that politicians were failing to show any real lead.

“There is lack of leadership from the Government in terms of migration,” he added. “If there was more of a coherent strategy in place showing the positive benefits of migration that statistic would be a lot higher.”

The results show Fine Gael supporters were strongest in support of offering to settle migrants; the lowest were Sinn Féin voters. More than 70 per cent of Sinn Féin voters were strongly opposed to the move.