Racism rife as Dublin shows least tolerance

THE number of racist incidents reported to one of the country’s top intercultural watchdogs soared by 60% in the last six months of last year.

The National Consultative Committee on Racism and Inter-culturalism (NCCRI) revealed that it received 40 complaints of racist incidents between July and December last year, compared with 25 in the first half of 2006.

The NCCRI said that more than 70% of those incidents took place in Dublin, and ranged from verbal abuse right up to serious physical assault.

Benedicta Attoh of the NCCRI said the body was also concerned that there was still widespread under-reporting of racist incidents.

Most of the incidents seem to be carried out by Irish people. There is no evidence so far of racist abuse being directed at one ethnic group by members of another ethnic group, although Ms Attoh said it was possible that such abuse was taking place.

Instead, the figures indicate that racist abuse is mostly targeted at immigrants in public places, such as on buses. Data collated for the first three months of this year indicate that more than 20 complaints of racist incidents have already been recorded by the NCCRI.

Ms Attoh said that many of the people who had registered complaints with the NCCRI had failed to report the matter to the gardaí.

“It has been very difficult to prove a case in the past because the burden of proof is on the victim,” she said, although she added that this had now changed.

“People are not confident to report to the gardaí. There are a number of reasons for this, such as their experiences in their own country with the police, or maybe they had reported (an incident) here before and the case was not properly dealt with.”

She added: “In the reports we have received so far this year we are seeing that a huge number of racist incidents happen in the Dublin area.”

Ms Attoh also said there had been some serious incidents last year, including a case where a student from overseas was in a coma for a number of days following an assault.

While the number of racist incidents received by the NCCRI in the second half of last year rose considerably, it is still well short of the period January to June 2005, when 81 reports of racist incidents were received — the highest number since the reporting mechanism began back in 2001.

However, just last November a report by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) showed that 21% of immigrants entitled to work here said they had suffered discrimination while looking for employment.

A higher percentage of black Africans said they had suffered racist abuse in the course of the previous year, according to the same piece of research.