Our rapidly changing society needs an immigration and cultural forum

WE ARE not very good in this country at looking forward. We spend a lot of time remembering, revisiting and, more recently, setting up investigations into the past.

However, last July, the McGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, spent its week-long schedule of debates and workshops exploring what Ireland might be like 25 years hence.

Now a collection of papers delivered by 40 speakers over the course of that week has been published in book form under the title Managing Ireland’s Future.

One of the most useful of those contributions was given by Aidan Punch head of population statistics at the CSO.

Mr Punch does some informed crystal ball-gazing on likely population trends over the next 25 years.

He points out that while our present population in the Republic is four million, it will be about 5.5 million by 2030.

Our fertility rate will remain high, but this relatively rapid growth in population will also be fuelled by a large influx of immigrants.

His most striking prediction is that by 2030 the proportion of foreign-born persons in this country could exceed one million (compared with 400,000 at the time of the 2002 census). Foreign-born persons would therefore equate to 18% of the estimated population in 2030.

The CSO’s population projections would be a good starting point for an informed debate about the challenges which increasing immigration will continue to present. Recent events in France should serve as a timely reminder that social change of this nature requires detailed consideration not just by our politicians and policymakers, but also by the public generally.

One of the most useful innovations in Irish public debate in recent years was the establishment of the Forum on Europe. This cross-party forum sits regularly in Dublin Castle and has managed not only to attract considerable media attention about European issues, but also to better inform media and public debate on the topic.

It has been a useful model and should be replicated in the form of a National Forum on Immigration and Cultural Change which would have a brief to examine the changing shape and colour of our population and the increasingly multi-cultural nature of our society. The starting point for this forum might be a recognition that, despite some common misconceptions, we have actually handled our new-found status as a destiny of choice for large numbers of immigrants relatively well.

Some of the doomsday scenarios suggested when we started to experience large-scale immigration about a decade ago have not come to pass. Immigrants generally have been well assimilated.

Although individual incidents of abuse or assaults on immigrants inevitably have attracted disproportionate media attention, on balance Ireland can be seen as a tolerant and pluralist society which has proven itself capable of accommodating people from diverse ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds.

There is no reason to be smug, but some of the talk about a latent threat to social cohesion because of growing tensions over race, or growing antagonism directed at immigrants, is alarmist. The assimilation of immigrants has been made much easier by the fact that Ireland has enjoyed rapid economic growth for the entire period of this influx.

The reason why most of our immigrants are comfortably engaged in our society is because they are working. Work is the most significant social integrator. One of the factors contributing to alienation in France is that many companies are said to refuse to employ young people simply because they have an Arab-sounding name.

By comparison, in Ireland new workers of all colours, creeds and names are being snapped up. There is a misconception among some that immigrants are somehow living off the State or are a burden to our economy.

The opposite is very much the case. In fact the only element of the immigrant community not legally allowed to work are those seeking asylum and these account for perhaps less than one-fifth of all the immigrants in Ireland today.

The overwhelming majority of immigrants in Ireland are gainfully employed and are now fuelling our sustained economic boom.

The significance to our economy has been enhanced considerably in the period since EU enlargement. From the outset, Ireland has allowed people from the new entrant countries to work here.

For example, some representatives of the Polish community in Ireland suggest that 100,000 of their countrymen and women have come to Ireland to work in the last two years.

OUR political system has also handled the issue of immigration relatively successfully. It is sadly true that some individual politicians have on occasion sought to exploit fears around immigration. However, these occurrences have been very few and the fortunes of the handful of politicians involved have been mixed. Notwithstanding our relatively new exposure to increased immigration we have not, unlike other western European democracies, seen the emergence of a political party or force with a hard right racist or virulent anti-immigrant platform.

The establishment of a National Forum on Immigration and Cultural Change might also provide the space where the genuine apprehension among some over the extent to which immigration will change our society can be voiced. Such apprehension is natural, particularly given the rapid and recent nature of this change. As long as it does not harden to antagonism towards immigrants and generate ignorance or misinformation about the consequences of immigration, then the voicing of this apprehension would be healthy for a society facing change on this scale.

There are dangers associated with a politically correct restriction on freedom of debate about immigration because it leaves concerns unexpressed which can contribute to, rather than resolve, the risk of racism.

One of the issues about immigration which needs to be explored more urgently, and cannot await the establishment of such a forum, is a new pattern of occasional exploitation of immigrant workers at the lowest paid end of the workforce. The treatment of Turkish workers by Gama construction was the most prominent example of this.

Last weekend’s story of the apparent abandoning of 13 Latvians working as periwinkle pickers on an island off Skerries in Co Dublin was also particularly disturbing.

The trend whereby employers here will recruit lower cost employees who come to Ireland from other countries is a reality of the labour marketplace which cannot be countered.

However, minimal standards of pay and safety conditions must be enforced. The apparent determination of trade union leaders, and indeed of the Taoiseach, to make this issue the central focus of the upcoming round of social partnership talks is significant.

Another issue for a Forum on Immigration and Cultural Change is the extent to which those of new cultures and religions coming to Ireland are prepared to, or are to be required to, integrate with at least a minimal aspect of a common (if changing) Irish cultural identity.