DebatesSinn Féin is "not in favour of an 'open door' or 'open border' policy", the party's Dublin MEP Mary Lou McDonald told a special conference to conclude the party's lengthy review of its general election performance.
During an immigration debate Ms McDonald said "we accept the need to manage migration", but she stressed "there is no room for the cancer of racism in Irish society or in the ranks of republicanism. We cannot allow the destruction and division that sectarianism and discrimination brought to Ireland to revisit us in racism." Injustices had to be addressed, including "delays in processing applications and appeals, the impartiality and fairness of those processes, the existence of direct provision centres".
Ms McDonald said in intercultural Ireland, "agency workers, part-time workers, self-employed workers are being exploited". Vulnerable workers "are exploited, working for well below the rate".
Salome Mbugua, chairwoman of the African Women's Network, said immigrants should not be looked on as victims but as people who, if given the opportunity, could fulfil their potential and "can be looked on like any other Irish person regardless of our colour".
Kazik Anhalt, Siptu's Polish organiser, highlighted discrimination against immigrant workers, including underpayment of wages, lack of holidays, excessive hours, unfair dismissals, bullying and harassment.
Climate change
Ireland's potato crop is likely to be extinct by mid-century because of climate change and the cost of irrigation, the conference was told.
Dr Rowan Fealy, senior researcher with the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Unit at NUI Maynooth, said that, at least initially, agriculture in Ireland was likely to benefit from climate change.
There would be decreasing productivity and yields at more southern locations in Europe due to increasing desertification, but as a mid-latitude country Ireland was likely to have increased yields with drought-resistant crops like barley and maize.
However, "our more traditional crop types, particularly the potato - we're probably going to see its demise, as it becomes economically unviable to produce. This is largely due to the associated costs of irrigation becoming overly prohibitive."
Dr Fealy pointed out that Ireland "is the sixth-highest emitter of CO2 on a per capita basis. This is only two behind the US, the country we most often like to point the finger of blame at. So we really need to get our house in order very, very quickly." Ireland produces 17,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per person per year.
Dr Fealy said "water availability will become the critical issue in the future". There would be a national increase in rainfall of 15 per cent but a drop in the southeast of up to 40 per cent.
MEP Bairbre de Brún said Ireland was well placed to be a provider of sustainable technologies that others needed rather than becoming a net importer.
Ireland "has never had any extractive heavy industries" so it was in a better position "to advance quicker than others in developing an innovative clean economy".
Ms de Brún renewed the party's opposition to incineration and warned that local authorities could not operate on the basis that they could move from landfill to incineration.
Social partnership
The treatment of agency workers could threaten social partnership, Siptu's national industrial secretary and guest speaker, Michael Halpenny, warned. He spoke of "the paradox of social partnership, on the one hand, while we are virtually unique in Europe in our treatment of agency workers".
He said there was an absence of legislation supporting their right to organise and be independently represented.
Mr Halpenny said the trade union movement had paid a heavy price for supporting social partnership.
"The membership continues to support it, because they believe that it has been the catalyst for economic progress essential to underpin living standards and a better quality of life."
Economic progress had not been matched on the social side, Mr Halpenny said.
"While it can be argued that it will take time for social infrastructure to be developed, no such excuse can be offered for the failure to legislate for principles which have been accepted as basic human rights in advanced European countries and, in some cases, for many years."