Playing the race card will only poison our national melting pot

WE were all new to this country once. My people sailed into Cobh and built their churches on the hills of Cork. There weren’t too many Congregationalists round the city in the early years of the last century, but my grandfather integrated quickly.

He brought a wife over from England and they raised their three children here. My father won a scholarship to university and became one of RTÉ’s founding journalists. He saw himself as a nation-builder and so do I.

When I hear Fianna Fáil councillor Ken O’Flynn complaining that the Cork Dawah Centre on Shandon St is operating as a mosque I take it personally. That could be my church. He says his constituents can’t sleep because of the goings-on at the centre: “When my constituents ring me at 11 o’clock at night I take it very seriously.”