Eoghan Harris (Independent)

I ask the Leader to arrange a debate on multiculturalism, immigration, integration and allied subjects. Senator Norris's mention of taxi drivers makes that all the more acute because the other side of taxi drivers is having to listen to them about racial minorities in Ireland. In recent weeks, we have heard much talk about Irish people not doing jobs and Pilipino nurses being employed instead of Irish nurses - all the kind of neo-racial stuff one gets when jobs are under pressure.

This is a good time for us to have this kind of debate for two reasons. First, the Seanad is the right place to have this debate. The Seanad can in a calm mood debate all aspects of multiculturalism without any heat and with a great deal of light because everyone here has specialist knowledge on it. It could form the basis of a proper Government policy on the matter, not a quango-led policy, an equality agency policy or some special interest left-wing or right-wing group's policy, but a State policy. The business of cherishing all the children of the nation equally has a reciprocal obligation attached to it, that is, for the children of the nation to cherish the nation too. It cuts both ways. It is not only a one-way process and those who are the children of the nation, such as immigrant groups and other groups, have obligations to the State and to society.

Let us not practise the British habit of letting them all at it. Mr. Micheal Collins, the working-class writer from Southwark, wrote a book, "The Likes of Us", in which he stated, basically, that the British state dumped the multicultural problem on the Irish white working class and other sections of the British white working class while they lived in Islington and did BBC programmes about how there should be multiculturalism. We do not want that approach to be taken here. We cannot dump immigrants on working class communities and then rear up because they resent or resist it. This is not racism but class indifference shown by the upper classes. If we are to have a policy of multiculturalism, let it lay equally on every class, rather than having the white working classes of Britain and Ireland bearing the brunt of a policy that results in Polish and Nigerian workers and Muslims arriving in working class communities, while the rest of the population make trendy programmes about immigrants. I ask the Leader to arrange a debate on multiculturalism in a period of calm as opposed to heat.