Ireland has a "short period of time" to address racism and integration issues before they become a problem for a second generation of immigrants, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told the Dáil.
He said that "every report I have seen and every presentation I have attended on this matter stated that the problems are not with the first generation, but the second generation. This is a cause of concern and we have a chance to try to address it during a short period of time."
The Taoiseach also said that there was an "issue of respect for our laws that we must work out. To be frank, we are talking about recent crime issues. There must be a stick and carrot element." He said the rate of attacks on Irish citizens in general and women in particular had increased rapidly.
"I have plainly told the representative organisations . . . that they have a responsibility to try to get their communities to adhere to the law. We have a job to do and we must work closely with the organisations to ensure that practices on our side are stopped and their communities respect our culture." Mr Ahern was speaking following the publication of an ESRI report on racism which found that 21 per cent of immigrants seeking jobs face discrimination and that black Africans experience greater bias than other groups, with more than 50 per cent racially harassed in public.
Labour leader Pat Rabbitte who raised the issue said he had no serious quibble with the goals or philosophy of the Government's Planning for Diversity report "except that underpinning it with only €1 million means the good sentiments in the report cannot be taken at face value, when one considers the scale of discrimination exposed in the ESRI report and that this is our first generation of immigrants. We do not have second generation immigrants and the ESRI warns us to beware as a result."
He questioned the availability of language teachers. "No matter how many non-national children are in a school, the resource teacher-pupil ratio is 1:14 and a cap of two additional teachers or 28 children is in place." Mr Rabbitte said he was in a school recently where there were 180 immigrant children.
Mr Ahern said that the €1 million for the national plan was for administration since resources underpinning the plan were provided by a large number of departments including education, which "continually puts in a large amount of resources".
Education was a challenge "because many primary schools cater for several dozen nationalities. A total of 800 teachers have been teaching English to immigrants which is a significant number."
The Taoiseach said that two big issues had to be addressed - the application system for immigrants had to be seen to be credible and equal treatment once immigrants become members of Irish society. "Surveys in other countries with long-term immigration problems highlighted that these two issues had to be addressed."
He added that the Garda had a policy of positive discrimination for recruiting immigrants. "The main effort must be integration but there are problems." He said that senior gardaí had been working very closely with a number of different groups to "try to deal with some of the criminal matters that are creeping into society via immigrants".
