Media coverage of the refugee issue was criticised by Paul Cullen, development correspondent of The Irish Times. He recalled that while living in continental Europe he had come up against the "brute force of racism, the taunts, the beatings, even the killings, all directed against immigrants or their children".
As an economic immigrant, he had been unaffected by it all simply because he was white. "It was during this time, too, that I learned how the institutions of society can fan the flames of racism, how the media goad people into racist attitudes, how the government authorities, either consciously or unthinkingly, reinforce prejudice," said Mr Cullen.
"Sadly, in Ireland, it has been no different. Radio chat shows have given ample time for racists and other extremists to propagate their views. Newspapers have incited prejudice by the oldest tactic in the book - picking on the weak."
There were many ways of doing this, said Mr Cullen. Refugees and asylum-seekers had been labelled "scroungers", "bogus" or "fraudsters", though little evidence had been produced. "Their number - currently about 5,000 - has frequently been exaggerated, and so has the cost of accommodating them," he said. If one refugee committed a crime, he added, the whole community got the blame when the headlines were being written. Far too often, reports and articles had been written on the basis of suspect information supplied by unnamed authority figures such as gardai. The best example of this was the now notorious "Refugee rapists on the rampage" headline in the Star last summer, he said.
Mr Cullen said that the record of the authorities was little better. "What was the Department of Justice thinking of when it forced thousands of asylum-seekers, among them women and children, to queue in pouring rain outside its offices last autumn? "Why does it issue shoddy and sub-standard identity documents to refugees, which means that they get hauled aside at every immigration check?" he asked.
Thousands of asylum-seekers, he added, had been left for years in a legal limbo, prohibited from working or studying because the Department and the political establishment was unable or unwilling to provide the resources needed to process cases speedily.
"Nature abhors a vacuum. Racism and racists do not. Official paralysis has created a legal and administrative vacuum and this has been filled by racial antagonism on the streets of Dublin," he added.
"Worse, the asylum-seekers themselves have been blamed for the failures of the system. Silver-tongued politicians generously declare their affection for the so-called `genuine refugees' while at the same time hinting that the vast majority of asylum-seekers are not genuine."
Mr Cullen said that the refugee debate had been dominated by talk of pounds, shillings and pence, and by talk of burdens and influxes.
There had been nothing about the desperate circumstances from which refugees had fled, nothing about Ireland's obligations towards some of the world's "huddled masses" now that the State had become a small but perfectly-formed world power.
He said that he was not arguing that Ireland should allow in everyone, regardless of the circumstances.
Nor was he in favour of an amnesty for those 5,000 or so asylum-seekers who were here, despite the fact that the number was smaller, say, than the number of Irish people living in Munich.
However, he added, he did want to see open and fair procedures for dealing with asylum cases as well as procedures which were rooted in principles of international justice and which operated independently.