Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I join the previous speakers in condemning all forms of racism in this country. I agree that as a society and as a people we are not racist. Unfortunately, however, there is a small minority who engage in racism, and it is beginning to creep and grow among our population and our community. That is very regrettable. It goes without saying that we have to recognise that our hate crime legislation has been largely absent in dealing with the modern forms of racism which are prevalent among people who promote racism. The Government should do more through our local authority structures to promote better integration of our immigrant community, because we know it is our immigrant community, our minorities, the LGBT community and the Traveller community who are most impacted by racism. Local authorities have not done enough to step up to the plate and integrate migrants in our communities with the wider community. That role needs to be looked at and expanded upon. In last year's local elections many parties - the Minister's party, the Labour Party, my party and perhaps others I am not aware of - stood candidates from diverse backgrounds. We had a good candidate elected in Limerick city, Councillor Azad Talukder, who came from Bangladesh. He has done great work in promoting and seeking to integrate the migrant community and will shortly become the deputy mayor of Limerick city and county. We need to build on that. We have never seen in the Oireachtas diversification like we have now beginning at local authority level. I would welcome a start to that.

There is no doubt that the State is being racist in not dealing with the almost 25,000 undocumented migrants living and contributing to our society and our economy. These are people who have come in and have been visa overstayers for whatever reasons, but they are now here, they are embedded, they are integrated, they are working and they want to contribute to society, and we have to deal with that reality. We campaigned for the undocumented Irish in the United States and we are hypocritical as a State for not dealing with the undocumented here.

Social media have a huge role to play in advancing racism, regrettably. I have had numerous occasions to contact Facebook and other providers and they are simply not equipped or not prepared to deal with the prevalence and the spread of racism.

See this speech in context