Dr. Peter Rigney:

To respond to Deputy Brendan Ryan's comments on ethnic minorities, we cannot take our eye off the ball on that issue. If one takes the tragic events in Paris last week, the subject was young males with an Algerian background. This issue has been discussed in the French press for more than a decade. French society has become disconnected from many young males, primarily those from a north African background who do not know if they are north African or French and are locked out of the labour market.

Ireland is lucky that employment levels are high among its ethnic minorities, which are mainly eastern European and Slavic. However, I am hearing anecdotally that a number of those who worked throughout the boom had virtually no English when they were made unemployed in the bust, despite having worked here for nearly ten years. Their children are under-performing in school because English is not the first language in the home. While I do not profess to be an expert on this issue, Ireland must avoid the mistakes that were made in the United Kingdom and France. Large influxes of migrants normally occur when there is a labour shortage. For this reason, people tend to believe everything is grand because there are jobs for everyone. When the bust comes, however, people are made unemployed and their children become alienated. Ireland may not yet have experienced this problem but it is the job of deliberative committees such as this one to anticipate problems.