Madam, - May I use your pages to acknowledge a great kindness I received recently in our new multicultural Ireland? A friend and I were leaving the Stephen's Green Shopping Centre, making our way to the car park lift, when I fainted. When I awoke, three strangers, young adults from India, were assisting us. After getting us to the car park, one rang her doctor and stayed with us, one of the gentlemen went down and paid our ticket, and one searched three or four floors of the car park for the car, since the layout had confused us.
They abandoned their own plans to collect a suit which two of them had spent weeks, they joked, persuading the third to buy. I learned of their successful lives in Ireland, their delight at being here, and their occasional homesickness. They were lovely people, and all they asked was that I text one of them to say how I was. Unfortunately, I lost the slip of paper with the number and recall only that they live in Bray.
In the current debate on multiculturalism, focusing as it sometimes does only on the negative aspects, it's important to remember that many of the New Irish are bringing traditions of decency and humanity from their own communities that can only add to and strengthen our own. I'd like to thank these three kind people for that reminder, and to wish them all the best. - Yours, etc,
EILEEN KANE, Kilcolgan, Co Galway.