I am glad to support this important motion in the names of Members of all parties, including myself. I hope it will be regarded as something more than a ritual repetition of nice-sounding words. Racism in Ireland deserves closer attention than we have given it up to now because it is more serious than we realise. One weakness of this country is its homogeneity, the fact that so many of us are similar in background and historical and ethnic approach. The lack of diversity has weakened our society and given rise to some easily identifiable problems.
It is opportune that today sees the publication of A Part of Ireland Now: Ten Refugee Stories, which features interviews conducted by Mr. Andy Pollak. It appears to be an official publication because it has a foreword by the Taoiseach. The booklet gives details of ten refugees, some of whom have lived here for a long time and others who have arrived more recently. Unlike most official publications it is not exclusively laudatory. The earlier arrivees appear to have got on well in Ireland but some of the more recent arrivees have not. If I may I will quote briefly from the experiences in Ireland of two of these refugees.
One story concerns Mr. Luyindula and his wife, Mrs. Bikembo, who are described as the first Zairean political refugees to arrive in Ireland. The booklet states:
their experience of Ireland has not been a happy one. Two years ago he was beaten up by a group of youths in broad daylight in a street in Temple Bar, with passers-by failing to intervene to help him.
They received an anonymous racist hate letter sent to ‘The African' at their new flat. Both Catholics, they attend the local church every Sunday. Recently a man started insulting Mrs. Bikembo in the middle of Mass, and she had to be rescued by concerned parishioners. They have lost count of the times people in the street have told them to go back to Africa.
These people are recent refugees, unlike many of the others in the book who have been here for a long time. The husband is quoted as saying:
Since the attack I have started to see Irish people in a new light. Many of them think it's all right to have one or two black people living in Ireland. However, more than that irritates them. Older people are usually nice, but younger people are often nasty, and become particularly aggressive when they are drunk.
Mrs. Bikembo says:
I don't feel comfortable here . Although we are free, we feel like prisoners. I am afraid to walk in the street by myself now and my husband doesn't go out at night. The kind of racism we have experienced here does not exist in Zaire. There all foreigners, European and African, are made to feel welcome and are offered hospitality.
Another refugee featured in the booklet is Mr. Abdullah Hersi, a 40 year old Somali living in Dublin with his wife and six children. He has been here for six and a half years and has received a masters degree in financial services from UCD. The booklet states: He has sent out about 200 CVs to banks, financial services and insurance companies. Only two even bothered to reply. An Irish friend got him two months work as a security guard, the only job he has had in six and a half years in Ireland.
This makes sorry reading. I invite Members to look through this booklet, which they will have received today. Of these ten refugees, eight seem to have done well, to varying degrees, but the two who have done badly are the only two who are black. The others gained acceptance, the two who are black did not. The others came from diverse countries and backgrounds but what they have in common is that they are white. This says a lot about attitudes to race in Ireland. I congratulate the Refugee Agency for producing this worthwhile publication, from which people can learn a great deal. I hope we do, because the booklet is not the typical Bord Fáilte gush about Ireland and the Irish. It is closer to reality, and the reality is sometimes painful.
In terms of welcoming people from other countries and admitting refugees, no country in the world has a greater obligation than this one. Over two and a half centuries we sent our people to an enormous number of countries, particularly the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. They were rarely turned away and were able to make a considerable contribution to those countries as a result of their admission either as refugees or as economic emigrants which, technically, is what most emigrants are nowadays.
The earliest of our emigrants of this kind were Protestant dissenters leaving Ulster because of religious persecution and going to North America, principally to what is now the United States. They were accepted and thrived there. There has been a succession of others since, particularly the Southern Catholic Gaelic emigration in the 19th century. Compare the facility with which so many people who were born on this island were admitted elsewhere with how selective we are today.
The Irish Refugee Council today sent me statistics which I do not need to read out because the Minister is probably aware of them. We think we are overwhelmed with refugees and asylum seekers. Even with the big increase in numbers in the past few years, the numbers are minute, and we have not been able to evolve a system that can deal with them.
We always welcomed rich foreigners to this country, but for a long time there seems to have been an unspoken assumption that we did not welcome poor foreigners. In the early 1980s I received anecdotal evidence of happenings at Shannon Airport that disturbed me greatly. I was told of Cuban refugees trying to escape when a Cuban or Russian plane was refuelling at Shannon on a flight between Moscow and Havana, of which there were a great many every day at that time. They tried to hide in toilets at Shannon Airport, climb out through toilet windows, hide in cupboards and behind panels in rooms, and were hauled out of their hiding places and dragged kicking and screaming back onto the plane. When I inquired about this at the Department of Justice I was told that they were trying to come in here in breach of the law and therefore it was right to put them out. I was told they were not being deported, that they were being refused entry, and there was a great distinction between the two. Some of those people unquestionably went to their deaths after they were put back on the plane at Shannon. That is something of which this country should be ashamed. It is something that we should remember now when we look at the increased but still tiny number of people who want to come to this country and who are not welcome.
