Lenihan line on migrant labour

LEST some of our Turkish friends think that young Conor Lenihan’s Dáil outburst was racist, it might be useful to point out that Conor’s late father famously made an equally insensitive remark about our own migrant labourers in the 1980s.

As tens of thousands of young Irishmen trudged off every year to work for dodgy builders in England, Brian Lenihan smugly dismissed the problem by asserting that “we couldn’t all live on this small island”.

At that time he had been part of Ireland’s ruling elite for two decades.

Unemployment (and consequent emigration) had been the major problem facing the Irish State since independence. Yet this man had given so little thought to this central question of Irish politics that he thought Ireland’s emigration was caused by over-population.

Ireland then as now (as every teenage geography student knew) was western Europe’s least densely populated country.

Can I, on behalf the Irish people, reassure our Turkish guest workers that there was no racism involved... the back-slapping Lenihans seem to have the same contempt for all migrant labourers regardless of race, creed or politics. As my father might have said, they’re breeding ‘em yet.

Tim O’Halloran

23 Ferndale Road

Dublin 11