It has been argued that in 1956 we did not know any better, that our ignorance, prejudice and xenophobia were not our fault. Rather they were an inevitable consequence of the highly insular society which prevailed at the time, writes Mary Raftery.
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The Irish government - in 1956 it was Fianna Fáil - was keen to prove to the world that it could do its bit, and took in its quota of refugees (530 of them) fleeing Hungary in fear of their lives. Irish compassion, however, did not stretch to non-Catholics - there was an insistence that only RC Hungarians be allowed on to our hallowed isle.
Things went well at first. Crowds cheered the first arrivals at Shannon airport. We were delighted to be delivering them from godless communism. The fact that they were shunted into a disused army camp at Knockalisheen in Co Clare, a bleak and isolated barracks, did not unduly concern us. We had done our duty, had rescued refugees in accordance with our new-found international obligations, and they should be grateful. They weren't a bit grateful, of course. They complained about the bad food, the freezing barracks, the fact that they felt virtually imprisoned there, and that they could not work. They were labouring people, they said, and all they wanted was to be able to earn an honest living.
Eventually, after months of isolation, they went on hunger strike. The general view of this was that they should shut up and behave themselves. Fianna Fáil's Donogh O'Malley appeared particularly annoyed, thundering in the Dail that the Hungarians should be told "that while they are living in this country they will have to behave themselves in a reasonable manner." Other TDs asked were "our own people not entitled to any jobs that are going?" Fine Gael's Bill Murphy could have taken a leaf out of Marie Antoinette's book with his comment that he would happily allow the Hungarians to strike. "We have a lot of people who have not got rashers and eggs for their breakfast but these people have got them." It was taoiseach Eamon de Valera who attempted to moderate the debate by reminding deputies that "we have not passed through the trials which they have." Desperate to leave a country which had treated them so badly, most of the Hungarian refugees were eventually re-settled in Canada.
One wonders what de Valera might have thought of events in Tralee last week, when a group of 60 refugees again went on hunger strike in this country. Living at the Atlas House hostel, they were complaining about the food, often undercooked and inedible they claimed, and also about restrictions on visitors and activities. They are not allowed to work and their entire income consists of the €19.10 they receive under direct provision. Some of them have lived like this for several years. Much like the Hungarians, it was only through the extreme action of refusing to eat that they could get anyone to take their problems seriously.
The complaints of poor facilities, food and treatment in asylum hostels are by no means confined to Atlas House. With so little personal money at their disposal, asylum seekers in Ireland are wholly dependent on the hostels where they live and are acutely vulnerable to abuse.
It is somewhat ironic then that this week should also have seen us initiated into the mysteries of Operation Gull, designed to target social welfare fraud committed by foreign nationals. It was reported by this newspaper that (unnamed) sources close to the investigation were "staggered" by the level of abuses uncovered.
And the amounts of money involved in these shocking crimes? Over the two years of Operation Gull, it is estimated at €6.6 million. Certainly a substantial sum, but what was not mentioned was that it represents something less than one percent of the €800 million total fraud within the social welfare system for the same period. This of course is fraud perpetrated almost entirely by Irish people.
While it is always valid to highlight fraud, whoever commits it, it will be interesting to see how the current attention on foreigners in this regard will play into the wider political agenda.
The Minister for Justice has introduced his new Bill to force non-EU citizens to carry ID cards with biometric data, and to permit the immediate deportation of foreigners who fail to be "of good behaviour generally". And the Government will shortly have to decide whether or not to allow Bulgarians and Romanians free access to our labour market on the accession of their countries to the EU. In a climate where a recent Sunday Tribune opinion poll indicated that a sizeable majority of Irish people believe that immigration is destroying traditional Irish values (whatever they are), the dangers of encouraging a siege mentality are all too evident. Perhaps in 1956 we did indeed know no better in terms of our attitudes to others. You might think, however, in the intervening half century that we might have learned a thing or two.