Ms Áine Ní Chonaill:

First, when one refers to emotive language it simply means one is of a different viewpoint and does not like it. On the business of us having a history of emigration, the answer is - so what? It is our business to run the country in the interest of our citizens. I was once on holiday in Norway, not that many years ago, and our guide was a well educated man - a third level lecturer. I raised this mantra with him, that which we hear in Ireland about our history of emigration. Norway would be the other country in Europe closest to ourselves in having a very strong history of emigration. I said to him we hear that "with our history of emigration now it is our turn to let people in". I asked him if this was said in Norway. He could not believe what I was saying. It is not something one hears in any other country. People in Ireland do not seem to know much about the fact that Germany, between 1850 and 1900, supplied never less than a quarter of all the migrants to the United States. It is a country that somehow people do not seem to associate with emigration. If one said to the Germans "you supplied a quarter of America's immigrants between 1850 and 1900, now it is your turn", they would laugh at you.