IRISH people's attitudes to travellers paint a picture of "caste-like apartheid", Father Micheal MacGreil, the prominent Catholic sociologist, says in his latest study of the nation's prejudices.
He also found an "alarming" level of homophobia and hostility to people with AIDS. More than a quarter of those interviewed would deny Irish citizenship to gay people and more than a third would deny it to people with AIDS. Younger people are more tolerant, however.
But Father MacGreil found "a significant and substantial decrease in racialism" since his early 1970s study. He suggested that positive role models such as President Nelson Mandela, the soccer player Paul McGrath and the musician Phil Lynott were important influences in this regard.
There has also been a reduction in sexism, with 64 per cent of the people interviewed agreeing with the statement "the feminist movement is very necessary in Ireland".
These findings are contained in Prejudice in Ireland Revisited, introduced by the Minister for Equality and Law Reform Mr Taylor, in Maynooth yesterday. This 536-page book, based on interviews held in 1988-89 with more than 1,000 people all over the Republic, updates Father MacGreil's seminal 1977 study of Dublin attitudes, Prejudice and Tolerance in Ireland.
Mr Taylor found it worrying that prejudices against travellers were hardening. Three-quarters of those interviewed "would be reluctant to buy a house next door to a traveller", while one in 10 would deny them Irish citizenship.
Compared with his earlier Dublin study, Father MacGreil found a "massive deterioration" in the numbers who would welcome a traveller into the family, and a drop of a third in those who would welcome them as next-door neighbours.
Father MacGreil expressed surprise that the Irish people "have refused to accommodate this tiny, if visible, minority". National and community leaders and the media had "serious questions to answer" and he called for a new commission of inquiry into the treatment of travellers with wide terms of reference and traveller participation.
Father MacGreil's study also, covers attitudes to religion; nationality and ethnic identity, Northern; Ireland and Britain; politics and unemployment; and marriage and family life.