Let's give John O'Donoghue credit. It's true "racism is unworthy of our country and people". We haven't been listening properly to this man. He's trying to get things right. And what does he get in return? Lip.
We can speak freely here among ourselves. I mean, you know what it's like. You've had a few pints and you're off for a kebab. There's a funny-looking fella walking down the street, your street, strolling along as if he owns the place and giving you the dead eye. You don't know him, you never saw him before. Look at the shape of him - just climbed out of a tree.
What these people think they're doing coming into our country and trying to take our jobs is anyone's guess. The nerve of them, the sheer bloody nerve, they didn't even have the manners to wait. We're only after getting back on our feet and there they are, hammering the doors down for a piece of the action. Over in Mount Street they're like junkies queueing up drooling for a fix. The state of them, they have no shame.
Personally, I wouldn't give the time of day to the people who say the Government's policies upped the ante on the racism thing. Us racist? You must be joking. Listen, we are the ones who gave Paul McGrath his big chance, we're the ones who gave the world Sir Bob Geldof, we're the ones who fought for the rights of small nations. And, by the way, got no thanks.
What impresses me now about O'Donoghue and his lot is how they had the honesty to tell us the state we were going to be in. They were thinking ahead. Prophetic, you might say. It's a war, that's what, and they knew it. But did we listen? No.
They said if we didn't get tough with refugees and asylum-seekers and immigrants, whatever you call them, we'd be seeing fighting in the streets. They said we'd have to use the old "iron hand in the iron glove" approach or there'd be trouble. Were they right? I rest my case.
If we'd given them the back-up they needed, we wouldn't be in the state we're in now. And we're in a state, make no mistake about it. It's costing us a fortune to keep all those Romanians and Nigerians in their luxury apartments breeding like flies to get an Irish passport, never mind the cost of doing the paperwork for them. You'd wonder when O'Donoghue is pushed to the pin of his collar trying to get staff why the ones with the work permits wouldn't volunteer to man the desks in the one-stop shop themselves.
No smoke without fire, that's what I say. Did you notice how quick their own police were to want to come to Ireland? Answer me this: If they hadn't been up to no good, why are their own lot coming over here to spare our lads the reddener of sending them back? I'd lay money that when they start fingerprinting them, we'll find more than a few crooks in their midst. I myself am looking forward to seeing how the Romanians can stiffen the Garda's resolve when they get here.
Those fellas started off as the Iron Guard in their own place, and they knew what to do with pinkos and the like when Hitler was only a gleam in his Daddy's eye. I've nothing against Romanians, don't get me wrong. But let's be honest, they're all over you given half a chance. I saw photos of their houses, if you can call them that, back in Romania and pigs in the kitchen wasn't in it.
Now that O'Donoghue, he's been round the block a few times. But who has this poor fella from Kerry got on his back now, only the bishops. Not even the Prods, and who listens to them? The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, who'd damn you to hell faster than look at you.
Four of them, swinging the purple and rabbiting on about procedures and dignity as if they think we can't see through them. What are they at, only trying to ingratiate themselves with the leftie liberals. That poor unfortunate David Richardson who was half-killed in Pearse Street, that's what immigrants are doing to this country. There was none of that stuff before they flooded in. Sure how would you know he was a visitor?
I agree completely and sincerely with John O'Donoghue that we should condemn this savage and senseless attack, but I ask you, with so many of them illegals on the prowl, visitors like him are taking their lives in their hands.
I won't stand for it. No sooner than we get out from under what the Brits did to us for 700 years than a whole river of others flows in on top of us, and starts getting us a bad name. What our lads are doing is getting us up to speed with the rest of the civilised world. We are Europeans now, whether people like it or not, and if it wasn't for the likes of O'Donoghue and William Hague, we'd be stripped of the benefits before we could say Euro-Disney.
The Irish are the best people in the world. Anywhere you go, you lift the dustbin lid and an Irish man or woman is down in the dung-heap helping the people whose own won't touch them. There's racist for you. It makes me weep.
mruane@irish-times.ie