The weekend attacks on young foreign visitors in Dun Laoghaire, and the publicised decision last week by a young man of mixed race to leave Dublin on safety grounds, must serve as stark illustrations of something nasty, virulent, and still largely untreated in this society.
In the Dun Laoghaire case, a young German girl's face was slashed with a broken bottle by a gang of local teenagers on the East Pier. Later the same gang - reportedly - attacked and robbed a young Japanese woman of her handbag. In the interval between these attacks a number of less serious but doubtless frightening assaults were carried out on other young foreigners in the district.
Last week, Mr Christian Richardson, son of Mr David Richardson, who was seriously injured in a racial attack in central Dublin in June, decided he would return to Britain. He found the atmosphere hostile and threatening to the degree, he said, that he believed he would be safer there. His comments moved the National Assembly Against Racism (UK) to criticise Irish politicians for "contributing to a climate of racial intolerance" here.
The concerned observer has only to listen in the streets of our towns and cities at night or in so many work places during the day. Racial abuse has infected the vernacular to an extraordinary degree. Otherwise apparently respectable men and women employ the most grotesque language in regard to refugees, asylum-seekers, economic migrants and, indeed, ordinary tourists. Irish people of mixed race, or whose families have come from abroad, confirm that they now encounter hostility which was not there three or four years ago.
People living in many Dublin suburbs will feel that the Dun Laoghaire attacks are part of a pattern in which young foreign visitors are targeted by local thugs. The young visitors are vulnerable. They usually have some money or other valuables. The attackers' motives may include robbery but the assaults are frequently accompanied by racial abuse. A great many are not even reported to the Garda since the young people involved are due to return home and are unlikely to be available to give evidence if the culprits are brought before the courts.
Unless there is a concerted and urgent national response, the poisons of racism and xenophobia are set to spread through this society. If this is to be countered, it will require leadership from politicians, community figures, the media, the churches and others. Popular entertainment and sporting figures could probably achieve a great deal if they were willing to give an example to the young, in particular. It will require education and enforcement. Parents, teachers and police officers must have a role to play. But at national level, the first movers must be the elected political leadership.
Will we, as a society, respond as we ought to? It is highly unlikely. Just as we have despoiled our environment, run down our health and social services and turned our roads into killing-grounds, we will very likely fail to confront what we now see forming around us. Our response will be too little too late and it will be pitched at the lowest common denominator of political pragmatism. And when we have our first Stephen Lawrences and our first Rodney Kings we will wonder what has become of us.