Immigration is the great unspoken territory in Irish politics, one where most politicians fear to tread, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent.
Following a day-long gathering in Clontarf Castle on Tuesday, Fine Gael TDs, senators and new general election candidates got to their feet to applaud their leader, Enda Kenny.
The speech had focused on immigration: the challenges, the opportunities, the need to make newcomers welcome, and on the need for newcomers to become part of Irish society.
By the following morning, some had focused on his reference to the Irish being a "Celtic and Christian people" to portray his speech as something it was not: the playing of the race card.
In fact, Kenny said something very different: "As a Celtic and Christian people, we understand better than most the special challenges of immigration and integrating new communities.
"Now is the time for a real national debate on these issues so that we can make the necessary changes to meet these new challenges. We have a chance to get this response right and to avoid the mistakes that were made elsewhere," he said.
Oddly, Kenny may now gain approval from those who understood and approved of what he actually did say, and from those who did not, and who may now believe FG has adopted an anti-immigration stance.
Clearly, Ireland must learn lessons from elsewhere, and there are many bad ones to be learnt from Bradford and Burley in the UK to the poverty-ridden banlieus of Paris.
And Kenny is not alone in believing so. The Minister for Social Affairs, Seamus Brennan, warned at Christmas of the danger of Parisian-style riots in coming years by the children of today's immigrants if we fail.
The immigration issue has changed significantly since the 2002 election, when TDs such as Cork North Central Noel O'Flynn of Fianna Fáil complained loudly about "asylum-seeker spongers", and benefited in voters' affections from so doing.
In Clogheen, Co Tipperary, locals feared contracting contagious diseases from immigrants staying in an old hotel. Today, the hotel is closed, most of the asylum seekers have left and no contagion was spread.
Five years on, the flow of asylum-seekers has slowed: down from just under 12,000 in 2002 to a little over 4,000 in 2005, and the figures are understood to have continued to fall since.
Today, immigration in most people's eyes means the Polish plumber, the Lithuanian petrol attendant, the Latvian cleaner or, among higher earners, the superbly qualified eastern European computer programmer.
For some Irish, perhaps most, the experience has been positive, though poorly educated Irish are convinced that they are losing out to eastern Europeans for low-paid labour - even though economic statistics largely show otherwise.
"Economists can say what they like. Most politicians will tell you that we are hearing a different message in poorer parts of our constituencies," one Fianna Fáil TD commented privately yesterday. "There is no doubt but that that is happening. Equally, you hear people getting frustrated when one of their children can't get a local authority house. 'I'm not racist, but . . . ' is the refrain," he went on.
"But nobody wants to adopt a hard line on this, for fear of getting hit, though it is not a good idea for Kenny to be raising this so close to an election," another TD feared.
The driving habits of some eastern European drivers - as shown by the fatality figures and by court lists for road traffic offences - are also causing disquiet locally that is being passed up the line to TDs.
Curiously, the political parties' efforts to research the issue are showing a constant: women working at home minding children are more likely to hold racist views. "People who are out there working alongside a Pole know that we are all the same: that we all hate getting up in the morning, have girlfriend trouble, whatever," said a Fine Gael official.
In early 2006, the Labour leader, Pat Rabbitte spoke out about the possible need to require citizens from the 10 states, including Poland, that joined the EU in May 2004, to have work visas before being allowed entry.
In the face of strong reaction, Rabbitte amended the message to one demanding that Irish labour standards should be upgraded and enforced rigidly to ensure that conditions for Irish workers were not lowered.
Today, all the major parties are agreed on the basic points that Irish labour law should stay strong, that Bulgarian and Romanian workers should not get free entry, and that immigration has broadly been a positive experience.
Equally, they agree on the need for a US-style green card to govern immigration from outside the EU, so that Ireland can pick and choose the ones it wants.
So far, no political grouping has made progress by promoting a harsher line, though some existing TDs have done by speaking the same message more quietly on the doorsteps. The Immigration Control Platform, led by Áine Ní Chonaill, tried in 2002 and failed miserably, and there is little evidence yet that it will be any more popular in 2007.
Though the ultra-liberal wing may turn up its nose at Kenny's conduct this week, there is little doubting that he is in tune with public opinion, as shown so emphatically in the citizenship referendum in 2004.
Then, the Government proposed that citizenship should not be conferred on children born here unless the parents had been living legally here for four years.
The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell faced loud charges of racism. Irish voters, however, saw differently, and supported the change by an 80/20 majority.
However, problems are reaching the constituency desks of TDs from all parties, particularly in schools struggling to teach English to the children of immigrants. "There's no doubt about that. In some places, Irish kids are falling behind because so much effort has to go on immigrant kids who can't cope in English," said one TD.
Equally, there are troubling signs that integration is not happening in many places, particularly in the newer housing estates in west Dublin and other urban areas where social ties are weakest.
"There are the early signs of "white flight" in some areas, where Irish people who bought houses and then moved on, renting them out to immigrants who tend to stick to themselves," said one Labour TD.
For now, Ireland is getting the best end of the deal from immigration. Most foreign workers are young, well- educated, pay taxes and require little from State services. However, 32,000 foreign children are already in Irish classrooms. In time, there will be more. The language problems already evident are not going to disappear.
Given the pace at which change has occurred the miracle, perhaps, has been that Ireland has encountered so few problems, though it cannot depend on luck, and on economic prosperity's ability to hide cracks forever.
