It’s good to talk

ime keeps passing. Change keeps happening. Each of us has, like it or lump it and whether we realise it or not, dealt with huge amounts of change in our time, however short.

Like, the Internet is just a decade old, give or take. And back then a mobile phone was the size of a peat briquette. AIDS first appeared here just under two decades ago. And so on.
I’m saying this to set the recent ‘citizenship referendum’ result in context. Some people – mostly ‘no’ voters I imagine – are upset at the outcome, and appalled that 80% voted in favour of the proposal. But taking the longer view, the one that looks at what’s actually happening on the streets around us, they may be mistaken.
It’s not quite much ado about nothing, but it’s not far off. Take a look at the figures. Look at the birth figures and celebrate them. Look at the fact that already five per cent pupils in our primary schools are ‘non-nationals’. Isn’t that good?
Walk between Dublin’s Spire and Connolly Station if you don’t believe me. You can walk thirty or forty metres without hearing English spoken. A vast number of new nationalities are making this their home.
And as happens everywhere, a whole new set of commercial operations has come into play to supply the plethora of new tastes. New media emerge and new eyes look at our world and identify other ways of doing things, other avenues, other opportunities.
Multicultural Ireland is already a fact. What’s at issue is what it will be like. That’s in our hands now.
I would be pretty upbeat about it, actually. I think we’ll make a decent fist of it despite the anguished declarations and angry labelling by some of the more impassioned opponents of the referendum. But to get there we have to talk about it and we have to do so in a calm and rational and strategic way.
And that’s the problem. It seems impossible to raise the very real issues and concerns that are out there without being called racist. It seems that anyone who questions the assumptions of the non-governmental sector regarding immigration is likely to be so accused and we certainly heard some voices arguing that the result of the recent vote indicated that the Irish were racist.
It’s not true. Furthermore, it also distorts the meaning of the word. Call it the racism card in reverse. And for the record, while you can call Michael McDowell many things (and many people have), it is quite incorrect to call him a racist.
And I don’t accept that the 80% ‘yes’ vote means that the Irish are racist, or unwelcoming or indeed ungenerous. I’m pretty certain that a lot of people voted yes because they regarded the issue as a simple one of tidying up a major anomaly in our arrangements and they accepted that it was unlikely that the rest of Europe would come into line with us.
But I also accept the challenge that comes with the vote result: to engage with others, to argue the case, to champion and support. Nelson Mandela said that if you wanted to achieve peace you had to talk to your enemies, not your friends. And the same applies to progress towards a multi-cultural Ireland.
Many have accused the Government of acting too fast and acting too slow and of presiding over a shambles of a policy on immigration.
Well, if immigration policy is a shambles it’s because our thinking is shambolic – we often get the policies we deserve. And to actually have a policy on immigration we need a debate. And for that we need clear thinking, cool heads and open, honest discussion. In turn, that demands that we stop labelling each other and start listening.
But will we?
Well, I suppose we may assume that the Government is doing some heavy listening after its humiliation in the recent elections.
As for the Sinn Féin vote, quite a lot came from a real disillusionment arising out of what we have been hearing day in and day out in the tribunals and the bank scandals. It’s all very well to attack the ballot-box-and-Armalite strategy. But what a lot of people see is a ballot-box-and-brown-envelope strategy. And they’re fed up with it and they don’t want to take it any more.
But right after that, Bertie goes and gets a result in Europe. Well, good for him (seriously). Puts him one notch above Mick McCarthy, I’ll tell you that. And watching what’s happening in Portugal, Gawd, it’s such a pity we’re not there. We might have been in with a real shot.
Funny old game, life, eh?