Minister is complacent on the realities of racism

INTEGRATION Minister John Curran’s apparent complacency about the realities of life for those members of Irish society (whether “non-national” or otherwise) who experience racism and discrimination here is worrying.

The minister dismisses the results of a major survey designed by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights to provide data that can be used to inform evidence-based policies (the EU Minorities and Discrimination Survey – EU-MIDIS) with the somewhat mystifying remark that “the methodology used in Ireland for the survey was different to that used in other countries and, more importantly, was only carried out in Dublin”.

In fact, the data collected in the survey was gathered using a standardised quantitative survey instrument (ie, questionnaire) applied to 23,000 face-to-face interviewees in all of the 27 member states, with some slight variations in the sampling methodologies used (ie, how the interviewees were selected).