With so many immigrants now arriving in the State, why don't I know any of them? asks Rosita Boland
I'm puzzled. And unsettled. Why is it, I increasingly find myself thinking, that of the 121,000 people who registered with the Garda National Immigration Bureau between January 1st and October 31st this year, I don't know a single one of them?
This number doesn't include the others - exact figures unknown - who are living unregistered here. Nor does it include members from the 10 accession states, who from May of last year are no longer required to register their presence.
As it happens, I have travelled for substantial periods of time to many of the countries which so many new members of our population come from. These include China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, India, Sri Lanka and Iran.
In all these countries I had opportunities to learn something about the culture and religions of those who lived there: opportunities I seized every time, whether it was accepting help and hospitality from people, visiting museums and places for which the country was well known, or simply looking at the local newspapers and television.
I was always interested in finding out more about both the people and the places I visited. I am still interested.
So why is it, to take one example, that having spent a wonderfully happy month some years ago travelling round a snowy Poland on trains, and striking up conversations everywhere I went, I somehow don't know a single one of the 100,000 Polish people now living in Ireland?
Is it my fault? Or is it circumstances? Perhaps it is both. The fact is, despite the numbers of recently arrived immigrants, we're still a predominantly white, monocultural society in our outlook. If we are beginning to think of ourselves in multicultural terms at all, it is certainly not unselfconsciously, and that in itself is telling.
It is a truism, but we are creatures of habit. In general we meet the people we know through work, or socialising, or through our children. Even in this increasingly frenetic life, most of us know at least some of our neighbours.
But the newest members of our population are not - as yet - my colleagues. I am not meeting them socially. To my knowledge they are not among my immediate neighbours, and I do live in an area where I know many of my neighbours.
I don't have children, so getting to know some of the 14,994 Chinese or 11,502 Nigerian children and their parents - or any of the other many nationalities living here - via school is an opportunity unfortunately lost to me.
However, I do believe that proper integration of our new communities, not lipservice integration, will come chiefly through schools and that it will take a generation before it happens.
Meanwhile, where I have met the new members of our population is at service stations, where they attend tills and put air in my tyres. And in restaurants; but not as fellow diners, as those serving me dinner. Or behind the counters of late-night shops and fast-food outlets. What all these jobs have in common is that they are poorly paid.
In Ireland, even though we like to think of ourselves as less rigidly class-driven than our neighbours across the water, where a visible aristocracy still endures, we increasingly define class by economics. The more you earn, the more you can buy, be it an SUV or a Louis Vuitton handbag.
By the end of this year we will have spent an estimated €40 billion disposable income on consumer items in Ireland. This spend-fest has to be lodging somewhere in our national consciousness and values: the assumption being that the less you earn, the less you can buy, and thus the less respect and profile you'll be afforded by our society.
I don't know how much of that €40 billion will have been spent by the newest members of our population, but I do know that if you were one of the 13 Latvian periwinkle-pickers rescued from Colt Island off Skerries after the boat that brought them there did not return that evening, you'd have to pick a lot of winkles to afford the €1,200 Manhattan handbag in Brown Thomas, which is currently its best-selling bag in the Louis Vuitton range.
Would I do that job, picking winkles in November? No, I wouldn't, and I don't know anyone else who would. But at least 13 people from Latvia did, and none to date has lodged a complaint about their treatment.
I don't much like what this says about our society. And it makes me feel even more distant from the lives of those from other countries who have chosen to come and live in Ireland.