Sir, - Aine Ni Chonaill's tirade against refugees and asylum seekers (April 12th) does not reflect the views of many Irish people. There is a small core of hardened racists in this country but they are a tiny minority. Most people are not racist. However, people are often taken in by the racist ideas that are fed to them: refugees are the cause of the housing shortages; they are milking our welfare system, etc. These are all lies and a diversion from where the real problems of housing shortages and poverty come from in this land of the Celtic Tiger.
Nobody in the present Government has openly said in Dail Eireann: "Refugees are welcome in Ireland." Mary Robinson has been one of the few Irish political leaders who has openly given them the welcome they deserve and correctly said that refugees can only be an asset, both culturally and economically, to our country.
For Aine Ni Chonaill to pretend that the hundreds of thousands of Irish people who emigrated to the United States in the 1980s were somehow more legitimate is completely rewriting history. The differences between the two groups were firstly one of numbers and secondly that the Irish emigrants were not fleeing famine, war and possible death. They were merely "economic" refugees. But they have much in common. Neither group wanted to leave their country of origin. The Irish in America contributed great wealth to the American economy and so too will the immigrants who have arrived in Ireland.
The Anti-Nazi League wants to see a multicultural society in Ireland where people can reap the rewards of the richness of such a society. There have been moves within trade unionism to encourage this. The teaching unions all have good anti-racist policies, as have many other unions. Most recently a conference of the Dublin area of SIPTU endorsed a motion to launch a billboard campaign stating that refugees are welcome here.
We want to see more of these initiatives so that the hard-core racists know that they are not welcome in Ireland. - Yours, etc.,
Crea Ryder, Anti Nazi League, Dublin 1.