Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Tonight's statements on racism are very apt and are a positive opportunity for us to say something loud and clear and for those of us in public life to put ourselves into a leadership position. It is also important for communities that we make it clear that racism should not have any place in society at any level. People often point to the far right as being the problem and suggest that a distant, elusive group is behind it all. I know there is some truth in that, and some groups are active on social media but what I fear more than the far right is the near right, the nice sensible people in areas where a number of people of foreign origin live or work who have a terrible attitude to them based on their race. I recently spoke to someone about migrants coming to an area and he said, "God knows what kind of people would come here". I asked him to repeat it slowly. He started with "God knows". There is a reference to God but at the same time the phrase is used as a means of somehow denigrating other human beings. That is something that flies in the face of everything that so-called Christians are supposed to believe in. Sometimes I find it very hard to understand all of that.

Fear is one of the factors at the core of the issue - fear of the stranger. If one is afraid of something, it is a very short distance to hate. That is the problem we have. This is always about fear. If one looks at any of the stuff being peddled by the people on the far right to whom we referred, it all has a sense of fear attached. It has a fascist element as well. Fascism is a well-organised minority controlling the disorganised majority. We have a little bit of that across the entire country. I do not wish to be overly political but we must understand that whether it is in a rural or urban area, if communities feel they have been left behind that is fertile ground for such people to spread their message. I refer to an area where a family has a child with autism and an SNA cannot be provided in the school, where their neighbour is on a waiting list for a hospital operation and the woman down the road has some other issue concerning lack of access to a State service. Such places are fertile ground for right-wing people who say the foreigners will come in and they will get everything.

People are inclined to believe and embrace that. That is one of the difficulties we have. All the years of austerity in this country have led to some of this. We have to be responsible and understand that. We have to understand that people's sense of outrage over having been left behind in so many ways, and they have, has led to circumstances that are fertile for many to carry on with this kind of nonsense. They are at it everywhere. The years of austerity and the annoyance with the Government cannot in any way be underestimated as reasons we got into these circumstances. They should not be but that does not mean we cannot change, show leadership and work to make things different.

Let me refer to the activity we see, particularly on Facebook and other social media, regarding the Irish being almost some kind of super-race. I hear it talked of. One of the fascist statements I read more than any other implies we are great people, we went to every corner of the world, we built America, we did this, that and the other, and we are so great we should dominate. That is the message being circulated. It is a racial message. It is also said that we should take our proportion of people. It is only in the context of race that people talk about proportionality. They do not talk about it in any other context. If a large factory were to open up in a town and 500 young workers were to come to the area, people would not say, "Oh God, we could not possibly put up with that." It would not be said it is out of proportion. The people would welcome what was happening. It is only when it comes to race that the argument I have mentioned arises. The argument needs to be called out clearly. Many who use it do not understand or know it is a far-right argument. The near right take it up and we have to be careful in this context.

It is important to understand the types of migrants we have coming to Ireland. We have, of course, asylum seekers, or those who are fleeing persecution and war in many countries around the world. They apply for asylum and enter an asylum process here. We have an international obligation to ensure that we provide for them and that the State provides for them adequately. It is vital that we do this. Of course, many of us have a difficulty with the direct provision system and the way it has evolved over the years, and many of us want to see it come to an end, but we need to see a better system put in place, not no system. We need to work on that. The justice committee launched its report on this issue this morning and while it has pointed to many of the difficulties, it has also pointed to many of the ways forward.

Another set of people who come here comprises refugees, as mentioned by the Minister of State. I refer to programme refugees who have already been processed and who come here, who live in communities here, and who are welcomed and are very easily integrated into the communities because the locals know they are coming on a permanent basis. They are different from the asylum seekers, who are not coming on a permanent basis.

Migrant workers, or migrant immigrants, were mentioned by other Members. I have two nephews, both of the same age, 18. Both are the sons of economic migrants. One is the son of an economic migrant who lives in a little place in upstate New York called Mahopac. His father is my brother and he went to the United States as an economic migrant over 20 years ago. He had no papers but stayed, worked, found his way and managed, as did thousands of others. My other nephew is the son of a man from North Africa who came to Ireland as a young man over 20 years ago. He fell in love with my sister and they got married. The marriage did not last very long but that is life. Shafik is a magnificent young man. He recently won a Naughton scholarship and is doing a degree course in UCD. He got the highest points in the leaving certificate examination in County Leitrim.

The economic migrants coming to this country, or any country, bring great opportunities and advantages. International economic studies have shown that countries that take migrants in, be they illegal or legal, benefit from having them. This is because the migrants come with the sense of wanting to do better. They come from a place that is worse so when they arrive here and see opportunity, they grasp it and run with it. They make sure they deliver for themselves and their communities. They send money back to where they came from, just like we did everywhere we went.

The issue of racism is a vital one to address. How do we know a racist? When we go down the street and meet a garda wearing a uniform, we know it is a garda. When we meet a priest with a round collar, we know he is a priest. Racists wear no uniform and have no distinguishing marks. We only know them by the language they use and the context in which they use it. The context is vital. In recent times, there was a candidate in an election here who used language that I certainly considered to be racist. The language was used in the context of an election campaign so it was not used by accident. It was not something said long ago on a night out or something. It was very deliberate. If this is going to happen, we need to be very careful. Nobody coming into this House should use that type of language.

We have to understand that we have an opportunity as leaders of a nation that has gone to every corner of the world and looked for a welcome. Everywhere we went, our people looked for a welcome. They might not always have got it in the way they liked but they went looking for it. In most places, they did get it, in fairness. They went to England. Most of the people we know in our lives are children of economic migrants who went to other countries to try to do better and came back here and prospered.

We have a significant obligation but also a great opportunity to make this country better. Making it better will involve ensuring that we rid ourselves of this kind of language and hate speech, as well as the ideology behind it. I refer to the ideology that somehow, me and mine are better than somebody else. We are not; we are all equal. That is what we need to drive home very strongly, both from this House and everywhere else.

The issues of asylum seekers and asylum-seeker accommodation are one of the spark points. If we are to deal with it properly, we have to come up with better strategies on how to circulate information and get communities into a mode of greater acceptance and understanding. I do not believe, however, that people deserve to be somehow consulted differently about one colour or a people as if it were different from any other. I am referring to the notion that we have to consult people because they happen to be more vulnerable. We do not have to. We have to accept. We have to understand that the compassion we have should be without limits and that our generosity should not have conditions if we truly are a nation that is going to look to a better future.

This debate is commendable, worthy and worthwhile but it focuses attention only on the work we need to do. We certainly have an awful lot of work to do to progress our society to where it needs to be.

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