Population drain blamed for inciting racist attitudes

IRELAND’S population drain is inciting racist attitudes, it was claimed yesterday.

People caught up in the migratory shift were looking for someone to blame for the loss of their identity, culture and the breakdown of their community, said Joe McDonagh, chairperson of the National Anti-racism Awareness Programme.

Mr McDonagh said the situation was allowing racist attitudes to exist.

“People really fear that they are being taken over and it is a transformation of those fears onto what they see as something they can blame, and what will they blame? They will blame the increasing number of newcomers to this country. It’s a misperception.” The former GAA president, who is also chief executive of Forás na Gaeilge and chairman of TG4, was main speaker at the first meeting of the Irish Rural Dwellers Association, formed to provide a united voice on planning and other rural issues.

Mr McDonagh said the population decline, that was particularly obvious in Connacht, had enormous implications for the GAA as a community-based organisation that played a leading role in helping communities develop a sense of identity.

Mr McDonagh, who was involved in the GAA’s strategic review, said a third of the population of the 26-Counties, or 25% of the entire country, now lived in Dublin and its hinterland. Central Statistic Office figures indicated that by 2031 Dublin would account for over 35% of the Republic’s total population and the greater Dublin area would account for almost 50% of the total. “Your are talking about a massive growth there over 35 years, with Dublin growing by 58% and the mid-east growing by almost 40%. This has serious implications for the existence of rural dwellings and communities.”

As well of the serious consequences of having a concentrated urban population in one part of the island the drain was turning large parts of the western seaboard and border counties into large areas of wasteland.

Mr McDonagh said the Government had to get serious about having an effective spacial strategy that recognised the importance of decentralisation. “I listened to many sad stories at today’s meeting about people wanting to move back into rural areas but who ended up getting strangled in rules and regulations.”

The whole planning approach to traditional town land settlements had become nonsensical and anti-human because they prevented people from living where they were born and reared.

Mr McDonagh was confident that the new organisation had the support it needed to counter increasing anti-rural pressures. “The number of organisations under its umbrella will give it the strength it needs to force politicians to listen to what it has to say.”