Ireland must properly integrate new immigrants or else face the danger of French-style riots in the years ahead, Minister for Social Affairs Seamus Brennan has warned.
One-tenth of the State's population was now immigrant. "That is in just over two years, particularly from eastern Europe. We have an opportunity to get immigration right because we can see what happened in other countries. We have to learn from their mistakes.
"Their biggest mistake was in not having welfare, education and social employment policies that managed to integrate the new community," he told The Irish Times.
Society as a whole had an interest in ensuring that immigrants were properly treated, properly paid and properly housed.
"We will do better out of this, the Irish-born population and everyone else, if we act in a sensitive, humane way. We don't have a choice. We have new people here, and we have new people coming in. If we don't have integration policies that work then we will rue the day that we did not. We will have the problem that the French had.
"We need to make sure that the health system, the schools, the welfare system can take the extra load. Otherwise we could blow it if we don't learn from elsewhere," said Mr Brennan. The Government was "starting to get it right".
However, people from new cultures and countries must integrate. "Do we want to live in encampments, living side by side but not together, or do we integrate and have national Irish culture?
"Yes, people from new cultures will have some loyalty to their own culture, but they also owe a loyalty to an Irish culture: its way of life, its strengths, the Constitution, our rule of law.
"Some countries got this wrong where they just had different nationalities all over the place, with Chinatowns all over the place, where east and west never met."
He said new immigrants to Ireland must be urged to learn English. "That way they become part of the community, rather than operating as a community within a community. There is a danger that immigrants can be isolated within their own community if they only speak Polish, for instance, only read Polish newspaper, only watch Polish TV on satellite.
"I don't want to be prescriptive about how we do it. We should decide first where we want to go, and then decide now we want to get there. We have to decide first on what kind of society do we want to have.
"Ideally, everyone living in Ireland should be able to speak English. It is easier to avail of services, it's easier to integrate."
None of this should be interpreted as placing pressure upon immigrants.
"The analogy of Ireland's relationship with the European Union is an apt one. Our culture did not suffer in the way that we were told that it would. Our sense of being Irish is a lot stronger now that it was before we joined the EU.
"The new communities can have their identities strengthened, but they can also be, first and foremost, part of the new Irish culture," said Mr Brennan.
