LATEST UPDATE: JANUARY 2001
While Ireland remains largely homogeneous in terms of the ethnic origin, religion and culture (notwithstanding longstanding minority communities of Jews and Irish Travellers), the late 1990s - a time of rapid economic growth and a remarkable decrease in the rate of unemployment - witnessed a dramatic shift from its being a nation of emigration to a nation of immigration. In ten years, the number of individuals seeking asylum in Ireland rose from 31 (1990) to over 10,000 (2000). As a result, the issue of immigration, legal and illegal, has only recently become a matter of public debate, and the portrayal of these subjects, particularly in the Irish media, often betrays largely unexposed xenophobic attitudes among sections of Irish society. The climate created by such publicity has undoubtedly contributed to the appearance in Ireland of xenophobic discrimination, including even violent incidents. The widely reported and discussed June 2000 racially motivated attack on David Richardson, an English tourist, acted as a kind of 'wake up call' to the growth of xenophobic violence in Ireland, and provoked a soul-searching public debate on the problem and measures needed to counter it.
1997 saw the first (unsuccessful) attempt in Ireland's history to create an anti-immigrant political party. The results of a Eurobarometer poll of that same year indicated that 55 per cent of the Irish population characterized itself as racist to some degree; the follow-up survey three years later showed that Irish attitudes towards minorities and immigrants, while generally similar to those of other Europeans, had somewhat hardened.
It is also worth noting that, despite the fact that the targets of hostility are asylum-seekers seen as 'bogus', non-Irish nationals and Travellers, the victims of attacks are as likely to be non-white EU citizens, tourists, students or programme refugees. The increasing intolerance has, however, been to some degree counterbalanced by the adoption of new anti-discriminatory legislation and other anti-racist initiatives, and by a growing public awareness.
There have been no recently recorded incidents of antisemitism.
General population: 3.8 million (July 2000 est.) (CIA World Factbook); 92.7 per cent born in Ireland, and 1.1 per cent born outside the European Union (ECRI)
Minority groups: long-established Jewish community (1,200-1,600); some 25,000 Irish Travellers, an indigenous community (less than 1 per cent of the total population) (for factsheets, see Pavee Point Travellers Centre); small Muslim and Chinese communities; amongst the some 44,000 foreign nationals in Ireland, most come from the United Kingdom; others come from Asia (6,600), Germany (6,300), France (3,600) and the USA (5,600).
Religion: Roman Catholics (91.6 per cent); Protestants, the only significant religious minority (3 per cent); small communities of Jews (0.04 per cent), and 12,000-15,000 Muslims (0.4 per cent), many of whom are refugees.
Constitutional status: democratic republic with a directly elected president (largely titular) and a two-chamber parliament - the Dáil (lower house) and Seanad (upper house) - under a constitution adopted in 1937
Head of state: President Mary McAleese (FF) (since November 1997)
Government: a coalition of Fianna Fáil (FF, Republican Party) and Progressive Democrats (PD) headed by Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Bertie Ahern (FF)
Other major political parties: Fine Gael (FG, United Ireland Party), Labour Party (LP), Democratic Left (DL), Green Party (GP, formerly Green Alliance), Sinn Féin
June 1997 general election: the FF-PD coalition ousted the coalition of FG, LP and DL; full results for the 166 seats in the lower house are as follows (1992 figures in parentheses):
FF: 77 (68)
FG: 54 (45)
LP: 17 (33)
PD: 4 (10)
DL: 4 (4)
GP: 2 (1)
Sinn Féin: 1 (0)
Others: 7 (5)
European Parliament election June 1999: Ireland's 15 seats were allocated as follows (1996 figures in parentheses):
FF: 6 (7)
FG: 4 (4)
GP: 2 (2)
LP: 1 (1)
Independents: 2 (1)
Next parliamentary election: 2002
Next presidential election: November 2004
GDP: US$80 billion (1997), US$86.3 billion (1998), US$93.4 (1999), US$93.9 (2000) (OECD)
GDP growth: 9.1 per cent (1998-9) (World Bank Country-at-a-Glance tables), 11 per cent (1999-2000) (OECD)
Inflation: 1.4 per cent (1997), 2.5 per cent (1998), 2.2 per cent (1999) (CIA World Factbook); 5.2 per cent (May 2000) (Financial Times, 14 June 2000); 6.2 per cent (August 2000) (Daily Telegraph, 21 August 2000)
Unemployment (seasonally adjusted rates): 9.8 per cent (1997), 7.4 per cent (1998), 5.5 per cent (1999), 4.1 per cent (2000) (Central Statistics Office).
While Ireland remains largely homogeneous in terms of the ethnic origin, religion and culture of its population, the late 1990s - a time of strong economic growth and a remarkable decrease in the rate of unemployment - witnessed a dramatic shift from its being a nation of emigration to a nation of immigration. In ten years, the number of individuals seeking asylum in Ireland rose from 31 (1990) to over 10,000 (2000).
As a result, the issue of immigration, legal and illegal, has only recently become a matter a public debate, and the portrayal of these subjects, particularly in the Irish media, often betrays heretofore unexposed xenophobic attitudes among sections of Irish society. The climate created by such publicity has undoubtedly contributed to the appearance in Ireland of noteworthy xenophobic discrimination, including violent incidents, particularly in those areas where non-white or non-EU communities have been growing, namely in inner city Dublin and in Ennis.
1997 saw the first (unsuccessful) attempt in Ireland's history to create an anti-immigrant political party. The results of a Eurobarometer poll of that same year indicated that 55 per cent of the Irish population characterized itself as racist to some degree; the follow-up survey three years later showed that Irish attitudes towards minorities and immigrants, while generally similar to those of other Europeans, had somewhat hardened.
In April 1998, for example, the Association for Refugees and Asylum-seekers in Ireland (ARASI) claimed that members of ethnic minorities in some parts of inner city Dublin had been warned not to go out at night, a claim that was confirmed by the Garda Siochana (Irish national police) in one south inner-city station.
The highly publicized attack on English tourist David Richardson in June 2000 focussed attention on the appearance in Ireland of xenophobic attitudes in a more concentrated way. The following month, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (and former Irish president) Mary Robinson, in a speech at a UN conference on reform in Dublin, strongly criticized Ireland's record on racism and the treatment of refugees, saying that the country's image abroad was being damaged by recent attacks like that on Richardson.
According to a recent study by the Irish Refugee Council, 4 out of 10 asylum-seekers allowed to work have experienced discrimination at the hands of recruiters and employers. A survey published by the African Refugee Network in June 2000 found that more than a third of African refugees in London had experienced racially motivated verbal or physical abuse.
The rising numbers of such incidents has resulted in repeated calls by anti-racist and human rights organizations for the police to begin the monitoring of hate crimes.
It is also worth noting that, despite the fact that the targets of hostility are asylum-seekers seen as 'bogus', non-Irish nationals and Travellers, the victims of attacks are as likely to be non-white EU citizens, tourists, students or programme refugees. The increasing intolerance has, however, been to some degree counterbalanced by the adoption of anti-discriminatory legislation and other anti-racist initiatives.
The Irish Travellers are an indigenous pre-Celtic people with a unique history, culture and language. They are regularly denied access to premises, goods, facilities and services; they suffer discrimination in social and economic spheres, and are targets of frequent verbal and physical abuse, including racialized representations in the media. They remain the single most discriminated against ethnic group in Ireland. Travellers fare poorly on every indicator used to measure disadvantage: unemployment, poverty, social exclusion, health, infant mortality rates (more than twice those of the general population), life expectancy (ten to twelve years less), illiteracy (some 80 per cent of adults), education and training levels, access to decision-making and political representation, gender equality, access to credit, accommodation and living conditions.
While there is broad consensus on the low status and marginalization of Travellers, there is much less agreement as to the relationship between this disadvantage and ethnic discrimination. Regardless of this resistance to characterizing discrimination against Travellers as racism, like generally acknowledged racism it involves negative stereotyping - including notions of superiority and inferiority, and fantasies of dirt, danger, deviance and crime - and the widespread portrayal of 'nomadism' as a 'problem' to be eliminated.
Accordingly, Travellers' groups welcomed a landmark decision by the Central London County Court in August 2000, that Irish Travellers constitute an ethnic group, and hence are covered by the Race Relations Act. The case was supported by the UK Commission for Racial Equality on behalf of eight Irish Travellers who had been denied access to public houses in the London area.
According to 1998 government statistics, of 4,978 Traveller families (some 25,000 individuals), about 1,191 live on roadsides or temporary sites without basic facilities. They frequently experience difficulties in enrolling their children in schools, and are often denied access to the mainstream economy - due both to a lack of education and to discrimination - and therefore are dependent on social welfare for survival.
Providing much-needed services to Irish Travellers is hampered by a lack of accurate statistics about the community. Travellers groups hoped that the incomplete picture of that community that emerged from the 1996 Census might be corrected by the inclusion of an ethnic question in the 2001 Census (postponed to 2002), but plans for such a question were dropped by the government in October 2000 due to the lack of proper pilot studies. The question that will be asked by the Census ('Are you a member of the Irish Travelling community?') has not met with enthusiasm since it segregates members of the Travelling community, many of whom will therefore arguably be disinclined to answer it in the affirmative.
The report issued by the governmental Task Force on the Travelling Community (established in 1993) in July 1995 identified, among other things, the need for 3,100 units of accommodation to be provided by the year 2000, and committed the government to housing all Travellers by that year's end. However, the first annual report of the NCCRI on the implementation of these recommendations (published in the autumn of 2000) reported the provision of only 127 new units thus far.
The Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act passed in 1998 obliges local elected officials to draw up and implement plans for accommodating Travellers on a five-year basis, and requires Traveller input in the process. In the event of failure to agree on a scheme at the local level, the responsibility for drawing up the plan falls to county and city authorities.
Refugees and asylum-seekers
In 1990 the number of asylum-seekers in Ireland was 31. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), recent figures have been as follows: 3,880 (1997), 4,630 (1998), 7,720 (1999), and 14,796 (2000). The number of cases still pending at the end of 2000 was 12,067.
Over half of all the applicants in recent years have come from Romania and Nigeria (see UNHCR)
Asylum-seekers without income are entitled to supplementary welfare, rental allowances and free medical services but are not permitted to work. Recognized refugees are entitled to work and to welfare allowances and education grants in the same way as Irish citizens.
The Refugee Act of June 1996, adopted in order to meet the obligations imposed by signing the Geneva Convention on the status of refugees - which only came into force in November 2000 after an injunction was taken out against it by the former justice minister - extends the definition of a refugee to include a person at risk of persecution by reason of gender, sexual orientation or membership of a trade union, and includes a more flexible approach to the understanding of 'family' for the purpose of family reunification. It also attempts to codify the procedures by which refugees can appeal to the government and apply for legal aid.
The act makes provision for so-called 'programme refugees', i.e. those invited to Ireland in response to requests from bodies such as the UNHCR. In 1998 these included mostly Vietnamese and Bosnians (bringing the total of the latter, mostly Muslims, in Ireland to 600), and, in 1999, mostly Kosovar Albanians. A 1998 study carried out by Refugee Resettlement Research Project on the needs of programme refugees showed that 32 per cent of Vietnamese and 8 per cent of Bosnian participants experienced some form of xenophobic discrimination, ranging from verbal to physical attacks.
The Aliens Order, enacted on the last day of office of the outgoing government in June 1997, effectively gave immigration officers - untrained members of the Garda - the job of carrying out checks on people arriving at ports, airports, train stations and road entry points along the border with Northern Ireland. The order was made without consultation with the UNHCR or the Irish Refugee Council. The enactment of the order has resulted in immigrants being sent back to Britain without being allowed access to lawyers or interpreters, and has led to the targetting of Roma and people of colour, even if they are Irish or European citizens. In the first two months after the measure was introduced, 600 people were deported to their former countries. (For more information, see The Legal Condition of Refugees in Ireland.)
The dramatic increase in number of immigrants has caused numerous problems and much public debate. In November 1999, a motion of no confidence in Justice Minister John O'Donoghue (FF) - the minster responsible for immigration - was tabled by opposition parties, following an intervention by Minister of Social Affairs Liz O'Donnell (PD) in which she described the government's handling of the issue a 'shambles' and called for a more liberal immigration regime - and the provision of the right to work to refugees - to ease labour shortages. In May 2000 a new police task force was established to track and detain the subjects of deportation orders. In July 2000, the government granted all applicants who had filed before 26 July 1999, and had been waiting for twelve months, permission to work in Ireland.
In August 2000 two sections of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Bill 1999 that were referred to the Supreme Court in June 2000 by President Mary McAleese were both found to be constitutional. Section 5 allows unsuccessful asylum-seekers 14 days to seek a judicial review of their case before they are deported; Irish citizens are allowed six months to seek judicial review in legal cases. Section 10 extends the powers of the Garda to detain and deport refugees whose applications for asylum have been rejected. The case was the first time any president had used his or her powers to refer bills to the Supreme Court.
The government has also, in the past year, been implementing a plan to disperse asylum-seekers - 80 per cent of whom were formerly in Dublin - throughout the country. According to Philip Watt, director of the NCCRI, in August 2000, the measure initially provoked strong opposition in at least 6 of the 26 chosen locations (see Xenophobic incidents), amid sensational stories about the introduction of disease and crime, but had met with greater success as the months went on (see map for a dispersal of asylum-seekers).
A study carried out by the Irish Refugee Council (funded by the Joseph Rountree Trust) in August 2000 examined the internal workings of the asylum process and concluded that minimum international standards were not always being met by the Irish authorities in reaching their initial decisions. (There is a significant discrepancy between the number of applications that are successful in the first instance and those that are successful on appeal.) The study highlighted a number of omissions in the procedures, including the right to an interpreter, the right to a full interview and the use of properly trained interviewers adequately informed about the countries of origin.
Two Eurobarometer polls have been carried out in recent years in an attempt to measure the levels of racism and xenophobia in European member states. The first - carried out in the spring of 1997 by the European Commission - found that 45 per cent of Irish respondents described themselves as 'not at all racist', while 32 per cent described themselves as 'a little racist', 20 per cent as 'quite racist' and only 4 per cent as 'very racist'. The Irish score in the final category ('very racist') was among the lowest in Europe (where the overall average was nearly 33 per cent). Other results were as follows: 51 per cent tended to agree that 'people from minority groups are discriminated against in the job market'; and 42 per cent agreed that Ireland had already 'reached its limit' in terms of the number of people from minority groups.
Three years later, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia commissioned a follow-up survey, which was carried out in the spring of 2000 by Eurobarometer; about 1,000 interviews were conducted in each of the 15 member states of the European Union. The results showed that, on the whole, Irish respondents were similar to other Europeans in their attitudes to minorities, with the following notable exceptions: on the question of whether minority groups receive preferential treatment by the authorities, more of the Irish sample thought that they did (48 per cent) than the European average (33 per cent); on the question of whether immigrants are more involved in criminal activity than the average, 15 per cent of Irish respondents thought that they were, way below the European average of 58 per cent; and only 32 per cent of the Irish sample thought that minority groups enriched cultural life in Ireland, against a European average of 50 per cent.
In terms of an overall attitude towards minority groups, a typology of individuals ranging from tolerant to intolerant was used in the 2000 survey: in Ireland, 65 per cent held generally positive attitudes towards minorities (15 per cent were 'actively tolerant' and 50 per cent were 'passively tolerant', i.e. they held positive attitudes towards minorities but did not support anti-racist initiatives); 21 per cent were ambivalent in their attitudes; and 13 per cent were 'intolerant'. On the question of whether or not discrimination should be outlawed, the Irish sample felt most strongly of all the European countries that it should not (24 per cent thought it should, against a European average of 31 per cent). On questions designed to measure the degree to which minorities are blamed for social problems, 43 per cent of Irish respondents tended to agree that the presence of minority children lowered educational standards, and 56 per cent tended to agree that minority groups abused the social welfare system.
Some questions from the 1997 poll were repeated in 2000 so that some comparisons over time are possible. In Ireland, the most dramatic change was registered on the question of whether the presence of minority groups is grounds for insecurity: in 1997, 16 per cent agreed that it was, while in 2000 the percentage of those feeling insecure due to a minority presence had risen to 42 per cent. The number tending to agree that it is a good thing for society to be made up of people from different races, religions and culture, fell from 76 per cent in 1997 to 61 per cent in 2000. The number that tended to agree that 'in order to be fully accepted members of society, people belonging to minority groups must give up their own culture' increased from 13 per cent (1997) to 17 per cent (2000). Furthermore, the albeit small number of respondents in Ireland who felt that legal non-EU immigrants should be repatriated doubled from 8 per cent in 1997 to 16 per cent in 2000.
An Irish Times/Marketing Research Board of Ireland (MRBI) opinion poll (24 January 2000) on Irish immigration policy found that 74 per cent favoured strict limitations on the number of refugees allowed into Ireland and 19 per cent were opposed to such limitations. Contradicting this, at first glance, was the finding that 60 per cent agreed that, in view of the Irish history of emigration and the level of current prosperity, a more generous approach to refugees and immigrants should be adopted. It was reported that further qualitative work on the findings by MRBI showed that the harder line more accurately reflected the attitudes of the sample. Respondents were divided on the question of whether or not only those qualified to fill specific jobs should be allowed into Ireland (42 agreed, 49 per cent disagreed).
As part of its anti-racism public awareness campaign announced in August 2000, the NCCRI has drawn up an anti-racism protocol for political parties and candidates at elections. The voluntary measure obliges those parties that sign the protocol not to 'play the race card' during campaigns.
The close of 1997 witnessed the first - albeit unsuccessful - attempt to create an Irish anti-immigrant political party. Teacher Áine Ní Chonaill, who stood for the seat of South-west Cork in the June general election, said that she wanted 'to stop foreigners buying Irish property and to end the "plague" of the English New Age Travellers living off Irish social security'. Ní Chonaill tried to launch her party at a public meeting in Ennis in January 1999 but was heckled from the floor to such an extent that she was unable to proceed. Despite the failure of her party, she stood as an independent candidate and received 293 votes (out of 35,314).
Ní Chonaill continues to argue against allowing immigrants into Ireland in the letters pages of newspapers, signing herself 'Immigration Control Platform'. Her rhetoric has gradually become more explicit, moving from a 'concern for Irish culture' in 1998 to more recent alarm at the 'invasion of Ireland' by immigrants.
The National Socialist Irish Workers' Party (NSIWP), not heard of since a daubing of a Jewish butcher's shop in Dublin in 1986, was the most recent neo-Nazi organization active in Ireland.
In 1997 racist and anti-refugee material was distributed in Dublin and the Garda reported the existence of several far-right individuals or small groupings.
Antisemitic incidents
No antisemitic incidents have been recorded either by the Garda or the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland in recent years. Some apparently random abusive letters, mostly originating in the United Kingdom, have been sent to a small number of individual members of the Jewish community.
Although Ireland continues to have the lowest incidence of urban xenophobic violence amongst EU member states, there has been a recent sharp increase in such incidents, particularly in the greater Dublin area. Those reported include verbal abuse (often of a sexual nature), physical violence (against white foreigners as well as people of colour), discriminatory door policies in pubs and clubs, intimidation in the local community, xenophobic graffiti, the distribution of racist or xenophobic material and biased media reporting. The rise in racially motivated violence has brought calls for the Garda to begin monitoring hate crimes in order to provide proper data for analysis. Frances Fitzgerald MP has stated that 27 unprovoked racial assaults in Dublin were reported in the first three months of 2000.
A government plan to house 38 asylum-seekers in a disused hotel in the village of Clogheen, County Tipperary (pop. 420), was delayed, in late April 2000, by an arson attack on the hotel, followed by a 24-hour picket being mounted on the premises by local villagers. The local residents maintained that the influx of refugees would destroy the social fabric of the village.
In the same month, about 150 residents of Kildare town demonstrated against the planned arrival of some 400 asylum-seekers. The asylum-seekers were to be housed in converted barracks that already were providing accommodation for 300 Kosovar Albanian refugees.
Another attempt to implement the government's dispersal programme failed the following month when a Nigerian asylum-seeker sent to Waterford was, within days of his arrival, seriously assaulted by youths. After being followed days after the assault by the same youths - who told him they didn't want to see any Blacks in Waterford - Stanley Obinna Chukwu returned to Dublin, and asked for permission to remain there.
The incident that has received the most attention - and has acted as a kind of 'wake up call' to the reality of xenophobic violence in Ireland - occurred in June 2000 when David Richardson, an English tourist in Dublin, was stabbed and seriously wounded while defending his black wife and 24-year-old son (the latter a resident of Dublin) from a racially motivated attack. The Richardson family was walking home when a group of youths began shouting racial abuse before attacking them. Ruairí Quinn, the leader of the Labour Party, said the 'appalling and mindless attack [was] a slight on us all', and Simon Basketter of the Anti-Nazi League said: 'The constant stream of false information and hysteria over immigration has created a climate where physical attacks on immigrants are rising at a disturbing rate.' The director of the NCCRI, Philip Watt, said that the case forced the Irish to face up to the race question: 'Racism has been highlighted in a way that has never been done before.' Richardson's son Christian handed in his notice and left Dublin a few weeks after the attack.
During 1997 racist and anti-refugee sentiments were sometimes disseminated in the media, often in reports suggesting that refugees cost the Irish economy substantially more than any other group in welfare and housing.
In response to a some 250 Romanian refugees - mostly Roma - being smuggled illegally into the port of Rosslare, Wexford (south-east Ireland) in July and August 1998, an editorial in the Wexford People described the refugees as wearing designer clothes, eating in restaurants and living in posh flats courtesy of the Irish taxpayer. It said that the 'latest influx of asylum seekers has brought public services to breaking point' and that there was evidence of racial tension nearing boiling point. The paper's editor Ger Walsh rejected accusations that the editorial incited racial hatred, claiming that it merely reflected how people felt. Nonetheless, the editorial's accusations were denied by the Garda superintendent in Wexford as well as by the press office of the health board, which has responsibility for administering social welfare support for asylum-seekers.
Legal instruments
The Constitution of Ireland (Article 40.1) guarantees equality to all citizens, and is understood to be a protection against discrimination based on ethnic, racial, social or religious background. Article 44.2 expressly guarantees freedom of religion and conscience, and forbids the state promotion of one religion over another. Although these constitutional rights are guaranteed only to citizens, some existing jurisprudence has applied them to non-citizens. The report on Ireland issued by the Council of Europe's European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) recommended the adoption of a constitutional amendment expressly ensuring equality and other human rights to all individuals under Irish jurisdiction, not only to Irish citizens.
The Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1991 criminalizes incitement to hatred on grounds on race, colour, religion, ethnic or national origin, membership of the Travelling community and sexual orientation.
Two anti-discriminatory pieces of legislation - the Equal Status Bill and the Employment Equality Bill - were referred to the supreme court by the former president Mary Robinson in April 1997, and declared unconstitutional in May and June 1997 respectively. Portions of the two bills were combined to form a new Employment Equality Act which was introduced in November 1997, signed into law in June 1998 and put into practice in October 1999. This act - Ireland's first legal implementation of an anti-discrimination measure - penalizes discrimination in employment on the basis of gender, marital status, family status, sexual orientation, religious belief, age, disability, race and membership of the Traveller community. The 2000 Equal Status Act outlaws discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services on the basis of the same nine categories.
The Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act - obliging the authorities to provide accommodation for Travellers - was adopted in 1998, and has reportedly been implemented with mixed success.
The Refugee Act, originally adopted in 1996 in order to meet the obligations imposed by signing the Geneva Convention on the status of refugees, was challenged by the former justice minister, Paddy Cooney, who took out an injunction against it. Parts of the act came into force in August 1997, and further amendments were passed in July 1999, but the act did not become operational until November 2000. The process has contributed to a substantial backlog in the processing of applications for asylum.
Criminal cases
In September 2000 Gerry O'Grady, a Dublin bus driver, was convicted and fined £450 under the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act as a result of a verbal exchange with a black passenger that included racial slurs. This was the first conviction ever under the 1991 act. (The conviction was quashed in March 2001 in the Circuit Court on the grounds that O'Grady's language was 'appalling' but not likely to incite hatred as defined in the act.)
In July 1998 the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform established a consultative body, the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI), comprising NGOs and state agencies. In August 2000 the NCCRI announced the setting up of a public awareness campaign against racism - including an anti-racism protocol for political parties - and that the government had allocated some £4.5 million to fund the programme.
In 1999 the Department of Education launched a service entitled Support Teacher for Non-Nationals to provide for the teaching of English to non-English-speaking school children.
In November 1999 David Irving was prevented from speaking at University College Cork by 600 anti-Irving demonstrators. Despite the fact that the Garda attempted to contain the protestors they managed to gain entry to the lecture hall itself, and the Garda ordered that the lecture be cancelled. Irving was to speak on 'The myths of the Second World War' to the University's Philosophical Society.
Government officials and politicians have increasingly been speaking out against the rise in racism and xenophobia in Ireland. President McAleese's Christmas message in 1999 highlighted the subject of refugees: 'This year, historically accurate or not, we are celebrating two thousand years since the birth of Christ, that most famous refugee of all.' During the same week the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (a commission of the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference) proposed a set of eight principles as the basis of a 'humane, transparent and sustainable immigration policy'. In July 2000, racism was one of the two main topics at a government-sponsored NGO forum on human rights.
© Institute for Jewish Policy Research 2001
