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

I am sharing time, with three minutes for Deputy Ó Broin and five minutes for Deputy Andrews.

I wish to acknowledge the work that has been done but I believe we in this country have a long distance to go. This is true of many parts of the world, but of Ireland in particular. The Black Lives Matter movement has grown up in recent years and has become prevalent since the death unfortunately, under the knee of a policeman, of Mr. Floyd in the United States. It has brought everything of this nature very much into focus. I have heard some people react by saying that all lives matter and not only black lives. That is true but the movement has grown up out of a particular situation in the United States, where there is an atmosphere between African-Americans and the police service that is toxic. We want to ensure that does not happen anywhere else in the world. That is the context in which the movement has grown up.

We have heard the battle cry for people to come together. It has forced people in many parts of the world to look into their own history and past. For example, Deputy O'Callaghan mentioned the Congo and the situation in Belgium. We need to look into our present to determine the situation. I spoke to a schoolteacher some months ago. She told me of a primary school in a small town in the west of Ireland and how two children came into the classroom. They were obviously not Irish. They were of African extraction. Within a couple of weeks there were reports of them being bullied by the other children. When the teacher looked into it, it transpired what the other children were hearing at home was coming into the classroom. We need to look at all of that. We need to examine where we are going as a society. We need to put in the work to ensure that we change everything in that respect. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination report in 2019 made a range of recommendations. I acknowledge the formation of the committee referred to by the Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, some minutes ago. This effected one of those recommendations. Yet, many others need to be implemented with haste in the context of where we are now.

A range of factors come into it when we look at what develops racism. People hold an attitude towards, and fear of, something happening from abroad and of people coming in from abroad. They believe this will have an impact on our economy and social welfare system. All of these fallacies make up one aspect of it. There is also an aspect whereby people fear an erosion of culture. This is nativism. The thinking is that the Irish are the best and anyone else or any new people coming in would somehow dilute that. That is another fallacy and it needs to be addressed. Another factor that has a serious impact on this is shocks in our economy. When a shock comes to our economy, people fear that there will be fewer jobs and opportunities. They see people coming from other places or people of difference as a threat to their security or status in society. Those things need to be examined closely.

The issue we need to come to the core of is attitude formation and how it happens. Most people have a different view or perspective on life. It comes from either their experience or whatever information they dwell in and where they get their information from.

The vast majority of Irish people do not have much experience of people from other countries. As such, it is not from their own experience that they get this. They get it from informational fallacies. People have mentioned social media. Social media is one of the key problems in Ireland because people with extreme views who would never meet anyone else with the same extreme views are sharing them on social media. They find one another and put forward these ridiculous arguments about all sorts of situations. This is not just happening in Ireland - it has become a global phenomenon. Unfortunately, some of the political changes that we have seen in parts of Europe, the US and elsewhere are evidence of that.

We need to reach a point where we can examine where to go in this regard. This year has been unique and there will be many historical turning points in it. In the new decade before us, we need to consider how to have a new age of reason where everything is examined through clear analysis and reasoned debate and then work out how and why people form such negative and dangerous opinions and how to erode those. It is all well and fine to shout "racist" at someone and accuse people of being racists, but we need to get under that and determine how they formed their opinions and how to erode them as we move into the future.

Before I hand over to Deputy Ó Broin, I will say that although it is certainly for the Government to lead on this, the real effort is not just the Government's to make. Rather, it is for every aspect of our society. We all must work together to ensure we erode racism everywhere in our society.

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