Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

——and that everything has been falling apart since that ceased to be. The other view, and it is equally unpleasant and equally unsustainable, is that it does not matter who comes into Ireland, we should not have any controls, that deportation of itself is racist, and that heterogeneity, as opposed to homogeneity, is an end in itself. I suggest that is equally untenable as a proposition. The great majority of Irish people are to be found in the middle on this issue, in a liberal view, between the ideology of the extreme right and internationalist ideology of the extreme left. The great majority of Irish people are, to use Senator Hanafin's very eloquent phrase, generous-spirited and open hearted to migrants coming to this country and welcome them into our community. The great majority of Irish people have a sensible common-sense approach to all these matters. The great majority of Irish people, even in these Houses, concede I have a problem.

There is a Saint Augustine-like wish to say——