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Monday, January 18, 2010
INTEGRATION Minister John Curran’s apparent complacency about the realities of life for those members of Irish society (whether "non-national" or otherwise) who experience racism and discrimination here is worrying.
The minister dismisses the results of a major survey designed by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights to provide data that can be used to inform evidence-based policies (the EU Minorities and Discrimination Survey – EU-MIDIS) with the somewhat mystifying remark that "the methodology used in Ireland for the survey was different to that used in other countries and, more importantly, was only carried out in Dublin".
In fact, the data collected in the survey was gathered using a standardised quantitative survey instrument (ie, questionnaire) applied to 23,000 face-to-face interviewees in all of the 27 member states, with some slight variations in the sampling methodologies used (ie, how the interviewees were selected).
Leaving the question of methodologies "relevant primarily to comparisons with our EU neighbours" to one side for a moment, the fact remains that, for the first time, policymakers in Ireland are presented with the opportunity to gain an insight into the perceptions of 1,000 members of ethnic minorities who live in our capital.
The fact that evidence suggesting that many of those people feel excluded, discriminated against and – "worst of all" – picked on by the gardaí does not seem to interest the minister in the slightest is worrying, to say the least.
The minister notes that there has been no increase in the reporting of racist incidents to the gardaí over the recent past. Our experience in working with immigrants and members of ethnic minorities in Cork is mirrored in the EU-MIDAS survey, which found that the vast majority of those surveyed in Ireland who had experienced discrimination said they had not reported the incident.
Reporting rates among sub-Saharan Africans surveyed were as low as 16%. This is hardly surprising given that 59% of that group had experienced at least one random stop by the gardaí in the 12 months preceding the survey, bringing black people living in Dublin (and, from what we are hearing, in Cork also) into joint second place in Europe in terms of the frequency with which they are stopped by the police.
Will it take an Irish Stephen Lawrence for the Government to wake up to the realities of discrimination and racism by members of the Irish public and, sadly, the gardaí?
I would ask the minister to take very seriously any indications of patterns of racist and discriminatory behaviour in our society and of failures in the reporting mechanisms and in the effectiveness of our excellent legislation.
I invite him to test the results of the EU-MIDIS survey by means of a comprehensive national survey around the same issues, rather than dismissing them without further ado.
Claire McCarthy
Policy and Campaigning Officer
Nasc Irish Immigrant Support Centre
Mary Street
Cork
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