Cleric calls for immigration debate

A senior Catholic cleric has said that Ireland urgently needs to put in place an enlightened modern policy concerning immigration.

Addressing the Merriman Summer School, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, said: "The haste with which the citizenship referendum took place requires that now time should be taken for a broad and enlightened consultation on new immigration policy for the future."

Opening the school in Ennistymon, Co Clare on Saturday night, Archbishop Martin added: "We have to be attentive to outlaw, from the moment they first appear, any forms of intolerance and discrimination, and to create a culture of generous welcome and mutual understanding.

"The 'new Irish' are true Irish and they must never feel that they belong only on the margins."

He said "it would be foolish to imagine that becoming a truly multi-ethnic Ireland will be an easy task".

"Difference," he said, "is hard to accept. The current orthodoxy tells us that multiculturalism is enriching, but then we read statistics about a presumed high percentage of the vote on the recent citizenship referendum being a racist vote.

"We have multicultural concerts, but we also have ghettoes in our cities and around the countryside where people live in uneasiness."

Archbishop Martin said: "Individual and community are at the root of tensions in the Irish economy.

"There has never been social progress without sustained economic growth. But sustained economic growth on its own will not achieve social progress."