Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will take a moment to speak about racism. It is racism as opposed to racists that it is important to address. Racism is an everyday fact of life for people of colour in Ireland. It is this way because racism goes unidentified and unchallenged by many of us who would never classify ourselves as racist. As the Minister of State with responsibility for community development and the national action plan against racism, I plead with people to stop sharing and believing material in their social networks that indicates people of different ethnic backgrounds or people who are not Irish should be treated with fear and suspicion. It is the sharing or quiet support of such messages that is doing the damage to communities. It is this fear-mongering messaging that we should be suspicious of, not people coming to this country to seek protection and to build a better life. Community leaders, elected and otherwise, have a particular responsibility to question and challenge these messages among members of their community and their constituents, and at the kitchen table about which we have heard so much this morning.

I want to address something mentioned by a Deputy and, in fairness, it was done in innocence. Someone who has completed the asylum process and has perhaps been refused asylum has no entitlement to public services of any kind. I want to be clear on that. This point was made earlier and there was a lack of clarity on it.

We have set up a community engagement team. It has been working since September. It has assisted with the opening of 30 accommodation centres throughout the country. It has gone well in the majority of places. We have had difficulties elsewhere. The team has engaged with more than 50 TDs. Earlier this morning, many of those who have received direct calls from the community engagement team indicated they received no communication either from the team, me or the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman. The team focuses on the provision of information and the explanation of proposals. In many cases, there is not a vacuum of information but speculation about something that is not going to happen. The team, the Minister and I spend quite a bit of time reassuring and explaining to the Deputies here that there is not an accommodation centre opening up. That needs to be named also.

I go back to my message on racism. We in this House and people in communities throughout Ireland have a responsibility to question the messages going out on social media that are doing damage to communities.

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