Council reports major rise in racist abuse

The Immigrant Council of Ireland is calling for better systems for reporting and following up racist abuse, after a significant rise in cases being reported.

The council started a campaign urging people to report racism on public transport in Dublin, and 17 serious incidents have been reported since late March.

The Chief Executive of the Immigrant Council, Denise Charlton, said that since the campaign started, the number of incidents reported to them has risen from one a week, to five a week.

She said the racism included verbal insults and physical assault, and better infrastructure is needed to deal with it.

Ms Charlton said: "A mechanism of reporting that includes people like the Garda Siochana, the NGOs, schools.

"An infrastructure that anybody can report an instance of racism and that we're then analysing those figures and those experiences and seeing what happened, where it happened, what was the help that was sought, what were the gaps."