A Trinity College academic has argued that although racism in Ireland was primarily anti-Traveller, anti-black and anti-refugee, the Jews were the archetypal "others" of national Catholicism.
Dr Ronit Lentin, of Trinity's Department of Sociology, has put forward the argument in a paper entitled "Ireland's other diaspora: Jewish-Irish within/Irish-Jewish without".
Despite low-level hostility towards Irish Jews in Ireland, Dr Lentin said, "we should perhaps not speak of anti-Semitism but of allosemitism", whereby Jews were set apart as a people.
Dr Lentin added that the "most serious consequence of Irish anti-Semitism" was the continuing decline in the number of Jews in Ireland.
The high point of Jewish immigration to Ireland was between 1881 and 1911, but since 1946, the Irish-Jewish community had fallen by more than 70 per cent, from 3,900 to about 1,200. So, while Ireland was now experiencing net migration, the emigration of Irish Jews continued despite the economic boom.
"The story of Ireland's Jewish diaspora is a crossroads where diaspora narratives intersect," Dr Lentin said. "Not only are Irish Jews part of a Jewish diaspora, maintaining emotional ties to a series of mythical homelands; they are part of the Irish diaspora, maintaining links with a mythical Ireland where they sojourned for a brief moment in their collective wandering past."
Dr Lentin conducted an e-mail survey among the Irish Jewish Internet Group for her paper, asking respondents to describe their perceptions of "diaspora", and their experience of being Jewish outside Ireland and within Ireland.
Although Ireland, for most of the older respondents, was a brief moment in their collective history, many felt a strong connection and belonged to Irish-Jewish associations, such as the Israel-Ireland Friendship League and the Loyal League of the Yiddish Sons of Erin.
One respondent from Israel told Dr Lentin: "There are approximately 300 Jewish Irish-born living in Israel. The idea of the Israel-Irish Friendship Lea gue is to promote Irish culture in Israel. This year we are having Des Keogh and previously we had Niall Toibin, David Norris and Ronnie Drew."
The young Irish Jewish in Dr Lentin's study signalled a feeling of "otherness" in Ireland that contributed to their decision to leave Ireland to find more vibrant Jewish communities in Britain and beyond.
"Informants signify their otherness in not being au fait with Irish Republican songs when growing up, or being humiliated at having to leave assembly every morning at school," Dr Lentin said.
For young Irish Jews there may be new "European-Jewish possibilities". Just as Irish emigrants were the products of "educational and skills hothousing processes", Irish Jews were also moving on to leadership positions abroad.