Sir, - The numerous communities around the country that are aggrieved that they have been forced to provide space for refugees or asylum-seekers should ask themselves five simple questions:
1. How much consultation do they believe refugees were offered when war, oppression, genocide, famine or poverty was forced upon them?
2. Why and how can the location of refugees or asylum-seekers have a negative effect on local house-prices and the local tourist industry without a significant section of the locality being endemically racist?
3. Why is there no discussion about why there are refugees and where they are coming from, and about Ireland's role in this process? (For example, how can we see ourselves as blameless for the situation in Ethiopia when the EU is better at supplying arms than aid?)
4. No community is completely static. Residents and tourists move in and out of communities every year. So why is it, when these residents happen to be refugees or asylum-seekers, that communities are so adamant that they have the right to control who belongs to their community? How can they justify this double standard?
5. How many members of such communities have a relative or friend who emigrated illegally to England, the US, Australia or other parts of the globe, but feel they were justified due to economic reasons? If they had, how can they then justify the hypocrisy of moralising about newcomers' rights to our prosperity?
Unless communities which are to house both refugees and asylum-seekers are prepared to face these questions, their protests much be viewed as deeply reactionary and ill-founded. - Yours, etc.,
Michael McCarthy, Oakley Crescent, Shantalla, Galway.