Time to take off Rose-coloured glasses and examine our multicultural society

A LITTLE boy died. That’s the first point. The most important point. A baby boy, born in Ireland, lived for only 29 days. A few warm days in July. A few hot days in August.

At that point, the little boy died, following a circumcision done outside a hospital. What went wrong is now a matter for the gardaí. All we know, or need to know, at this point, is that the baby died.

Or maybe that's more than we wanted to know. Because, after the initial news story ran in newspapers, the silence has been almost complete. Nobody has set out to find out how many ethnic or religious groups circumcise their children, male or female. Instead, there's been a closed-down silence. An incurious silence: those new immigrants do strange stuff, but as long as the gardaí take care of any bad results, let's leave them at it and turn our attention to less important, but less challenging, matters. The Roses will do for a start.