Is discussion needed - or is it a trap?

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Trade unionists and demonstrators gather on O'Connell Street in Dublin to protest about the violence after rioting in the capital which followed a stabbing attack last week. Picture date: Monday November 27, 2023.
Trade unionists and demonstrators gather on O'Connell Street in Dublin to protest about the violence after rioting in the capital which followed a stabbing attack last week. Picture date: Monday November 27, 2023.

Is it time for the political system to grapple more explicitly with how immigration is changing Ireland and what sort of model - integration? multiculturalism? - we as a state wish to pursue?

Or is such a conversation only ever destined to be hijacked by hateful voices and to result in a normalisation of the sort of prejudice that was on display in Dublin last week?

To discuss and debate this and other related issues, Hugh talks to Kevin Cunningham, Una Mullally and Ronan McCrea.

Kevin Cunningham is a lecturer in politics at TU Dublin. Ronan McCrea is a professor of European and constitutional law at University College Dublin. Una Mullally is a writer, an Irish Times columnist and the author of In the Name of Love: The Movement for Marriage Equality in Ireland.

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