Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 436: To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality his plans to step up efforts and improve data collection on racist and xenophobic incidents as well as to broaden the basis for in-depth research on underlying motives; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35676/11]

Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 465: To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if he plans to fund and mandate an organisation to co-ordinate the monitoring and reporting of racism; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35850/11]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 436 and 465 together.

There are currently a number of official mechanisms in place to record complaints about both racist crime and racial discrimination. All crime statistics, including statistics on reports of racially motivated crime are collated by the Central Statistics Office, using the data elicited from the Pulse system of An Garda Síochána. Information on reported criminal racist incidents from 2006 onwards are broken down into 10 different categories of crimes. I am informed by the Central Statistics Office that further breakdown of the data in relation to, for example, gender and geographic location is not made publicly available, as this could lead to the identification of individual cases.

The trends in these statistics are monitored by the Office for the Promotion of Migrant Integration and are updated regularly and published on the website of that Office at www.integration.ie. In addition, the 2010 EU Fundamental Rights Agency Assessment of the Status of official criminal justice data collection mechanisms on racist crime in the 27 EU Member States categorised Ireland as having in place "a good system" to register racist crimes.

Statistics on the number of complaints to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission alleging discrimination on the grounds of race and/or religion are also available on the website of the Office for the Promotion of Migrant Integration, as well as statistics on the total numbers of cases taken before the Equality Tribunal under the race ground. In view of the above, I do not consider it necessary to have an additional complaints mechanism when there are already official mechanisms in place by organisations who have the capacity and authority to deal with complaints of racist incidents.