And so what will the new Ireland be like? One thinks one can discern its contours now and then. And yet, one wonders if what one sees is true. Take the changing demography. Five per cent of children joining Irish schools last year were not Irish. We have already heard of the numbers inflowing to find employment. And if you didn’t believe it, you can hear it spoken loud and clear in places like Ennis as much as in the centre of Dublin.

Of all the many groups who have come to Ireland in the last six or seven years, the Chinese are the most fascinating and enigmatic.
The scale is enormous. It may be as many as 50,000 people. Most of them have settled in Dublin. In effect, one person in every 40 in Dublin is Chinese. And their presence is not, the odd horror aside, terribly problematic.
In general, they have eschewed the asylum trail and the assumption of the victim’s mantle, coming in to the country as students rather than asylum seekers. Doing so means that they can work for 20 hours a week. Which, it seems, all of them do…and then some.
Writing in the Observer last Sunday, Henry McDonald contrasted their integration into Irish (and especially Dublin) society with the experience of other Chinese in the Village area of Belfast. There, loyalist paramilitaries and racists (insofar as there’s a difference) have attacked and harassed and bullied Chinese families who had the temerity to move in. Ulster will be white…
One remembers with a wry smile David Trimble’s ill-judged remarks about British multi-culturalism vis-à-vis Irish monoculturalism. But best not go there today…
Meanwhile in the south, the Chinese just come. And they work. Good grief, they work. And they study. And they learn to speak English well enough to say howiya as you step up to pay for your petrol, banana, whatever.
So, it seemed like such a good idea to celebrate the Chinese new year last week. And when we all read of Dublin City Council’s decision to support a festival in Smithfield, with stalls and food and street activities and street-circus performances, well we were impressed and enthusiastic.
So much so, that thousands of us made our way there to join in. Not hundreds of thousands. Just thousands. Families. Couples. Gangs of people gumming for good noodles and rice and, well…ya know yourself.
Jasus, what a let-down. When you got there, the queue stretched for half a kilometre. And for what – to pay for admission? No, it was free. You queued just get into the cage that surrounded the ‘festival’. Inside you could see small numbers of punters moving about buying this and that and (perhaps) even the other thing.
And the way was barred by shaven-headed (mostly English) security men with earpieces – perfectly clear and efficient and certainly not letting you in. Other security men shouted you aside as a very small dragon clowned by, with a very white, and apparently English, man at the head inside.
It was distasteful to say the least. Thousands of people who had been misled by the adverts came and were appalled. I spoke to people – plain ordinary people with children in tow – who were spitting with fury at the whole farrago.
Horrible. It really was. What happens with the fireworks at Paddy’s day is that the cops herd everyone into cages to control them. What happened with the Chinese New Year was that the security men kept everyone out of the cage to control them.
Here’s my guess. I’d say that the City Council’s insurers warned that they had to have an enclosed space and could only have a fixed number inside, in case somebody fell and would make a claim. So, tough shit. They brought in security men – who sounded like clampers on overtime – to control the citizens, who clearly can’t be allowed onto the streets in any meaningful numbers…
I’m tempted to say that whoever thought up and promoted this mess should be fired or should resign. I mean – if you can’t let people into it, why the hell run it at all?
And if, as I suspect, the overweening security was prompted by the Council’s insurers, isn’t it time a law was passed establishing that a person taking part in such a festival does so at her/his own risk? I mean, they can do this kind of thing in their sleep in every other mature, civilised city on earth, without exception, and I include Belfast, where they burn Chinese people out of their homes. So why is Dublin the exception?
I have no doubt that O2, to whom no blame attaches, will seriously evaluate its sponsorship of this farrago, and so it should. But the City Council can’t get off so lightly.
It should apologise to the people of Dublin for conning them into coming to something so manifestly unlike what was promised. But above all, the Dublin City Council should apologise to the Chinese community for generating such a cynical and insincere response to the cultural identity of one in forty of the people of
Dublin.