McDowell says wartime Jews let down

There is absolutely "no analogy" between the State's failure to protect Jews during the second World War and the deportation of immigrants, the Minister for Justice has insisted.

Mr McDowell said it would be "trite and facile to say there is any analogy between what happens now and what happened then.

"We have a system of refugee law and asylum-seekers law that is very, very different.

"In those days things were done behind the scenes by officials following a policy." The Minister was responding to questions yesterday on RTÉ radio's Morning Ireland programme, following the State's first official Holocaust commemoration on Sunday at which he said Ireland had betrayed its own Constitution by failing to protect Jews during the second World War.

Asked if the EU would be formally apologising in 50 years time about barriers erected to stop refugees from Africa, he said "certainly not". It would, he said be "entirely false and trite" to make such a comparison. "I think things have changed dramatically."

He pointed out that "last year 40,000 people came from 100 countries to work in Ireland and 80 per cent of the people Irish people see in the streets with different skin colour and different accents come on an immigration visa to work in our economy".

The Department of Justice, he added, was spearheading the anti- racism campaign and it had co-funded Sunday's ceremony.

At the ceremony, Mr McDowell, said it was appropriate to "formally acknowledge the wrongs that were covertly done, by act and omission" to fail to offer refuge to those who sought it and by the failure to confront those who offered justification for the racial hatred and prejudice that led to the Holocaust.

At official level the Irish Constitution specifically recognised the rights of the Hebrew people, but "there was a culture of muted anti-Semitism" he said, and massive discrimination at social level at the time.