Jude Hughes is a black Dubliner with a Trinidadian father, and a cofounder of Harmony, the group which brings together Irish people of different racial and cultural origins. He recalls a recent incident which started when he and his companion, a black British student from TCD, were taunted by a teenager as they waited for a bus at Eden Quay. "It was the usual thing about being scroungers, living off the State - `Go back to where you came from'. I said to my friend, just ignore him, this nonsense happens all the time."

The teenager followed them on to the upstairs deck of the bus, sat immediately behind them and continued the abuse. A few minutes after the bus moved off, he physically attacked the student from England, repeatedly hitting him in the back of the head. Other passengers ran down the stairs for the driver and he came up and ordered the teenager off. Several passengers apologised to Mr Hughes and his friend. But one man shouted that the teenager was right.

Mr Hughes says it is people's ignorance of black people and their feelings which appals him most. "People sit behind me on the bus so I can hear them saying, `Those f...king blacks are taking over the place.' "

He is particularly concerned about the misconceptions people have about people from ethnic minorities and refugees, often taken from the media. He gives the example of an interview on the RTE radio news during the 1997 election when party leaders were on a walkabout in Temple Bar.

The reporter interviewed a homeless couple outside Focus Point who said they had been put out of their homes "to make room for refugees". Nobody on the programme challenged this statement, and Mr Hughes's complaints to RTE and the National Union of Journalists went nowhere.

"We know nobody would be put out of public housing to make room for refugees. But ordinary people don't know that. They believe what they hear on the radio. People like the unemployed and homeless are then easy fodder for the likes of Le Pen and Aine Ni Chonaill, who play on their fears."