Kenny speech on immigration just too narrow in focus

Some people were too quick this week to criticise Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny for daring to raise the issue of immigration in his address to a special meeting of his party's TDs and candidates last Tuesday, writes Noel Whelan.

The large influx of immigrants has been the most significant social and economic development in Ireland in the last five years and integrating these immigrants will be one of the main challenges which the next government will face.

It would be absurd therefore to suggest that this issue shouldn't feature in the forthcoming election debate. If anything, the political parties have been too constrained about debating the topic. Immigration was actually a big issue in the 2002 election.

Even though it did not feature in the setpiece media events of the 2002 campaign, it was the one topic - apart from the health services - which canvassers of all parties said voters were most likely to raise.

This issue is too important to be left to muttered conversations at the doorsteps. This time around the immigration debate should be held in public and should be up front and centre in the campaign. It is a welcome development that the leader of Fine Gael chose to address the issue in his first major speaking opportunity of the election year.

There were some good things in Kenny's speech; the full text of which was published in this paper last Thursday. He had some useful suggestions about structural changes in government which would lead to a better co-ordination of the policy response to the immigration challenge.

However, Kenny's speech had one central flaw - it was narrow in its focus. The speech dealt mainly with the difficulties which Kenny says immigration is causing for the indigenous Irish population and only dealt in passing with the needs of immigrants, or the positive contribution immigration is making to our society and our economy.

The careful and considered language could not disguise the suggestion that immigration and immigrants are responsible for some of our worst problems.

Among his suggestions were that immigration is causing a rise in crime, that immigrant drivers are making our roads less safe, and even that immigrants are taking places in adult literacy classes which were meant for Irish people.

Kenny began his speech by calling - like many before him - for a "genuine national debate" on immigration, but then went on to contribute to that debate from the perspective of the native population only.

The manner in which Kenny used two sets of statistics illustrates this point. He began a section of the speech titled "Keeping Ireland Safe" with a sentence about how this country has recently experienced a "shocking" rise in serous crimes, including murder.

He then told his audience that 22 per cent of those sent to Irish prisons in 2005 were from outside the European Union. He followed this figure with a sentence speaking of how a number of foreign mafia-style crime gangs are operating in Dublin. This juxtaposition of prisoner figures and the rise in serious crimes had the effect of suggesting that immigration is contributing to, or causing, a rise in the most serious crimes.

Kenny is wrong to suggest this. There is no evidence that immigration is leading to rising crime. The overwhelming majority of those engaged in gangland killing in this country are native born and bread.

Gangland crime was as prevalent in Dublin a decade ago, before the recent influx in immigration. While the non-national portion of our prison population is large, it does not follow that this is because Ireland has become some kind of safe haven for foreign criminals, or that non-nationals are more likely to commit crime.

The reason why non-nationals are over-represented in the prison population are more complex and varied than Kenny implies. A larger portion of the immigrant community is of an age group, gender, and economic class (young, male, lower or non-waged) from which most of the prison population comes.

Non-nationals are also more likely to be refused bail because they have fewer ties to the jurisdiction.

When convicted they are more likely to be sent to jail, in part because they are unlikely to be seen as good candidates for community service or other non-custodial options.

Some non-nationals have been imprisoned for immigration type offences; a category of crime which by its very nature is not available to the indigenous population.

Kenny then went on to deploy the same trick of juxtaposition to suggest that immigration is making our roads less safe. He spoke of how a "worrying" number of road accidents involve non-nationals. He then told his audience that 44 of the road fatalities in this country last year were people born outside the country.

In his next sentence (and remember this is all in the section of his speech titled "Keeping Ireland Safe") he talked about how non-nationals have a responsibility to learn about and comply with our road safety regime. He clearly implied that as well as dying in a worrying number of road accidents, non-national were causing a worrying number of road accidents.

Again Kenny is wrong in this suggestion. Of course all road fatalities are worrying. However, Kenny didn't tell his audience that there were 368 road fatalities in Ireland in 2006 which means that only 12 per cent of them were non-national.

Non-nationals now account for 10 per cent of our population and a larger portion of them are in the young male demographic bracket where road deaths are highest. On those statistics, non-nationals are no more likely to be involved in fatal road accidents than the general population.

Instead of contesting Kenny's right to raise the issue of immigration, the focus should be on the substance of what he had to say - or the lack of it.