A lot hangs on outcome of dispute

Of all the reasons why the dispute at Irish Ferries really matters, perhaps the least important has to do with industrial relations. The conflict between the unions and the management is, of course, of huge concern to 500-odd workers and their families. It also has serious implications for the prospects of another social partnership deal to replace Sustaining Progress.

But its ramifications go far beyond those of a traditional labour dispute. The ultimate identity of the winners and losers in this conflict will do a great deal to shape Irish society of the coming decades. If you care about Ireland's prospects of avoiding the creation of a ghettoised society, if you care about the future of the European Union, if you care about democracy, you have to care about Irish Ferries. After the recent riots in France, many people here began to ask whether the influx of migrant workers to Ireland over the last decade has placed us on the same road.

If they really are concerned about social integration and not just engaging in a polite form of xenophobia, such people should be backing the Irish Ferries workers.

For the best way to create an Ireland riven by ethnic divisions, in which migrants retreat into physical and cultural ghettoes while disgruntled working-class natives rally under the banners of the extreme right, is to do what Irish Ferries are trying to accomplish. Use migrant workers as a pool of cheap, exploitable labour to undermine existing conditions and replace Irish jobs.

Set people against each other. Generate hostility to outsiders by brandishing migrants as a weapon in a class struggle.

When the EU was expanded eastward, and the Government decided not to delay the entry to the Irish labour market of workers from the new member states, it looked like a civilised gesture. It seemed to be an expression of confidence in Ireland's ability to see the changes as an opportunity for mutual benefit.

We would get the workers our growing economy needs. Those workers would get the chance to earn a good living and, presumably, put much-needed money back into their homelands. The notion appealed to our decent, optimistic side, and it was one of the central reasons why the second Nice referendum was successful. But was another agenda at work? There is already concrete evidence that migrant workers are being used as front-runners in a "race to the bottom". Recent figures from the Central Statistics Office show that in the year to last June, industrial earnings in Ireland rose by just 2.7 per cent. The significance of this figure is that it is well below the minimum 4 per cent wage rise guaranteed by Sustaining Progress.

You don't have to be a mathematical genius to figure out that if the wages of most workers rose by 4 per cent while the overall average rose by just 2.7 per cent, then there must be a significant minority being paid less than the going rate. The obvious explanation is that many migrant workers are working for very low wages. If you're a cynical employer this is great news in the short term. You can get cheap labour and, if growth slows down, force Irish workers to accept these lower wages. But it's an absolutely nailed-on, sure-fire, 100 per cent guarantee of resentment, alienation, division and conflict.

The exploited migrant worker gets the message that she is worth less than the native. The native worker comes to blame the bloody foreigner for taking his job or forcing wages down, and begins to pine for an imagined past when everyone was white and Irish and things were better. The short-term gain for some employers comes with the price-tag of an ethnically divided society in which two under-classes, the exploited immigrants and the old working-class whose dignity has been eroded, glower at each other across new barriers of religion and culture.

If this isn't enough damage, add another twist. Make the European Union, potentially the most civilised political project of our times, the vehicle for all of this harm. Turn the generous impulses of those (including the bulk of the trade union movement) who supported EU enlargement into the concrete reality of Latvian workers on less than half the minimum wage and without the protection of Irish labour law directly replacing Irish jobs. Wave the Services Directive around like holy scripture in which the almighty commission decrees that you can't protect national standards of employment.

Then slather on the icing of your Taoiseach telling you that there's nothing he can do about it. And, while you're at it, wonder why the EU is crippled by the disillusionment of those who no longer see it as a protection against the extremes of globalisation and why people don't take politics seriously.

These broader consequences are the reason the Irish Ferries conflict shouldn't be left to the Left. All over Ireland, decent trade unionists have been holding the line for an integrated workforce and an integrated society, making the case that it is in everyone's interest for native and migrant workers to enjoy the same conditions. But if they lose that argument at Irish Ferries, the complex interplay of mutual interest will gradually be replaced by the foul simplicities of "Them" and "Us".