Dr. Niall Muldoon:

The Senator has spoken a truth perhaps. There may be an attitude survey that I have not seen, but there are the voices of the children in direct provision that we discussed in our report last year. They talked about a type of covert racism. There are many people, especially in the education and community systems, who do not think of themselves as racist, but there are very simple things. For example, the children said the black child would always be asked about basketball or rap music. There is an assumption that because you are black, that is what you want or like, but it may mean nothing to the children, or they are simply not interacted with at all while their peers are talking about the latest county team or about sports with their white colleagues. There are simple things such as teachers would often try to break up the groups of two or three children who are from the same direct provision centre and are together in the playground, saying in the process that this is how they integrate and that they have to mix, whereas they felt scared and they were together as a group or a team because that is where they felt comfortable. They had to go outside their comfort zone. Those are the small things we have. Overt racism is not necessarily something Ireland has to be aware of, but there is a lack of understanding of the impact of your behaviour when you work that way.

One of the things we have called for is a change in teacher training and more diversity among our teachers. I have called for the concept of bringing in teachers from the 17% of our population who were born outside Ireland. That 17% is not represented in our teaching population. If we got a greater variety of teachers by, perhaps, postponing the Irish language qualification for five or six years and letting them teach and build up their experience in the Irish, we could change the way children see their teachers and the way education happens. It would give them a target.

Within that, the Senator is right. The attitude of Irish people on a one-to-one basis is very positive, but as a group we sometimes think we are better than we are. That is only because we have been homogenous for thousands of years. It is in the past 20 years that we have changed from being nothing but white Irish and perhaps a few English to this multicultural, diverse society. That is really a bonus. We have an opportunity to enhance our communities and our future lives by welcoming these people in. It is to be hoped that is where we will go in the future.

As regards the trafficking, it might be worthwhile for the committee to talk to the Garda Síochána. I know a number of committees are working on this, with inter-agency work being done on trafficking. I am not up to speed on those, but certainly work is being done. That is something the committee might be able to discuss with other professionals.