In two decades, more than a quarter of this country's population would probably be "not what we would call ethnic Irish", Mr John Connor, Fine Gael's spokesman on justice, equality and law reform, predicted. While he would welcome this growing diversity, he believed we must prepare the ground for such demographic changes on the island.
Mr Connor, speaking on the Equal Status Bill, said the history of cultural diversity in Ireland had been different from any other European country and there had never been large-scale immigration.
"If we look at Europe, even after the second World War, and some of it also happened after the first World War, there were huge movements of people across national boundaries and the integration was so successful that many people hardly know nowadays that it ever happened."
This island had always been characterised by mass migration caused by unemployment. This, combined with restrictive immigration laws which we had certainly practised with great enthusiasm, and the North conflict, had ensured that there was no substantial immigration in the last 30 years.
We had been insulated from major trans-national movements of people. This had a lot to do with developing the kind of attitudes which we had and the great pity was that these attitudes permeated into the manner in which the administration expressed itself.