Madam, - Fintan O'Toole (Opinion, June 26th) writes that there is an Irish tendency to catch up with bad ideas just when they have been discredited elsewhere. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the writing of several Irish Timescolumnists, including Mr O'Toole himself, on the subjects of immigration and asylum. The staple diet fed to your readers on these subjects consists essentially of a series of vacuous clichés on the supposed benefits of multiculturalism to Irish society, just as the disastrous results of the application of this policy in other societies are becoming increasingly clear all over Europe.
So Irish people are deemed racist if they object to uncontrolled immigration, especially from outside the EU. Ditto if anyone dares to point out that most asylum-seekers are simply economic migrants trying to circumvent the laws on immigration or to suggest that failed asylum-seekers should be deported to their country of origin.
Equally, one is guilty of Islamophobia if one dares to suggest that women should not be allowed in public places if they wear veils which cover their faces. And to suggest that women who object to this idea should be invited to return to their countries of origin is both Islamophobic and racist. Two crimes for the price of one, according to the multiculturalists.
Foreigners recently arrived in the country who are not citizens and who may not even wish to become citizens are routinely described as members of "ethnic minorities", as if their families had been resident in the country for centuries. Or they are labelled the "New Irish" without anyone asking if they have the slightest desire to become Irish or see Ireland as anything other than a place where they can make some money. Just to make a simple comparison, I doubt if many of the Irish who arrived in England as economic migrants in the 1950s would feel happy at being described as the "New English" or "New British", no matter how long they lived there.
Multiculturalism, as now expounded in Ireland, classifies people according to their "culture" and esteems the most reactionary and backward elements of the "culture" concerned at the expense of its members who might wish to integrate into Irish society.
It is utterly destructive of the idea that eventual common citizenship should involve anything more than the right to hold an Irish passport. In a society which is becoming more and more atomised and unequal every day, it further weakens social cohesion.
The Labour Party, in particular, appears to have become completely colonised by this sort of nonsense - which may be one reason for its continued marginalisation in Irish politics, which on current form is well deserved. - Yours, etc,
ED KELLY, Szeged, Hungary.