Ireland ‘must act’ to avoid race crisis

IRELAND must seize the window of opportunity it has to ensure it doesn’t end up with the same racial problems as Paris, Amsterdam and London, a community activist said yesterday.

Fergus McCabe, who has worked in Dublin’s north inner city for 30 years, said there have been incidents in the area of groups of Irish children and foreign nationals “squaring up” to each other on the street.

“We either try to get things right now, while we have a window of opportunity, or we will be facing the sort of problems we see in other countries,” he said.