THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
In the week when a Congolese man, allegedly shoplifting in Dublin, dies while being restrained by security guards, the State brings out stamps to honour the Traveller community – a people we have ignored for so long – and the 2026 Dublin Rose of Tralee, medical scientist Suad Mooge, goes on national radio to tell of her racial abuse.
In that same week, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern steps into the fray, secretly recorded as saying he is concerned over Congolese people immigrating to Ireland and “fears” the next generation of Muslims. Presumably, those born and raised here.
Sligo-born Mooge (25) said there were some 4,000 posts on X, most racially hostile to her Dublin win. TikTok notifications “were relentless”.
Racism can take many forms and affects many in Ireland today. There’s the obvious, where people are called names, abused and harassed – like the recent attacks on Indian people. Then there’s the kind of racism that is more subtle; that makes it harder for people to get jobs or housing because of their colour or nationality.
There’s more. The European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) raises serious concerns about housing provision for Travellers, refugees and those it calls “other vulnerable minorities”. It also calls on the Government to tackle “an undercurrent of low-level racist violence”.
The ECRI calls for an enforced strategy to reduce “prejudice against Travellers, Roma migrants and Muslims”. Since 2007, it has been “investigating legislation, hate speech and efforts at integrating minorities in Ireland”. It reports every five years. In 2007, then Taoiseach Ahern said: “Migration cannot continue at its current rate if the country is to integrate successfully the thousands eager for a slice of its growing wealth.”
One of the report’s authors, Ukrainian-born civil rights activist, Volodymyr Kulyk, told me some time back via email that Ireland’s Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act was ineffectual in combating online hate speech. “There are no provisions in Irish law that define common offences of a racist, homophobic or transphobic nature, nor recognise hatred as an aggravating circumstance,” he said.
All forms of racism involve making assumptions and generalisations about people who are of different colour. These stereotypical views see other people as inferior and are used to justify the exclusion of people from opportunities, resources and power. Today, some politicians, minority groups and agitators promote racist ideas to justify their views on particular issues. These might include housing shortages and street crime.
We only have to look to the Dublin Rose to see racism rear its ugly head. And, in a perverse way, Bertie Ahern’s contentious remarks may have brought into the open a debate on thoughts some people think but dare not speak when it comes to migrants into, and refugees arriving in, this country.
We need to be cautious. Concern about migration and racism are not the same. We need a very open and honest debate about where we really stand as a people and where we want to be in a generation from now. We need vision – and clarity. Where would our health service and other industries be were it not for those who have come here for a better life and to contribute? And legally, as should always be the case.
Ahern’s off-the-record, unedifying remarks about the generation of Muslims yet to be born here ring a bell with me. Unless we see them as fully-fledged members of Irish society, with all the rights which that entails, we do risk an us/them ghetto scenario. I don’t believe racists are born racist. Racism is taught in society, a learned behaviour towards persons with dissimilar characteristics.
As former chief of the Irish Times Bureau in South Africa, Seamus Martin, says: “Bertie Ahern’s comments on immigrants have borne out some thoughts that have bothered me for some time. We sometimes pride ourselves that the Far Right fail miserably in elections in Ireland. But they don’t need electoral support. They can, by other means, set the political agenda for others.”
The other week I passed pupils emerging from school, the world their oyster. Two were holding hands, in a gesture of ‘first love’. A gangly lad and a girl of dark skin, no doubt Irish-born. That she is Black never enters their equation. Let’s hope her experience of growing up in Ireland is not sullied one day by uncaring and racist remarks.
Over coffee, Pakistani Rayyan, whom I have known for about a year, says: “I feel invisible in groups of white people because it seems like no one really listens when I speak. And why are Asians compelled to emphasise their hygiene and moral character when applying for housing to landlords?”
