The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has said he wants to build a national consensus on tackling racism.
Mr O'Donoghue said he would attend a world conference against racism next week with an open mind on future measures which might be needed in the fight against the "deep evil of racism".
The Minister will lead a 30member official Irish delegation at the week-long UN global conference against racism which opens in Durban, South Africa, next Friday.
He said: "I hope we will contribute to facing this down by sharing our experiences with the world and also learning from the experience of others where we can, so that if there are lacunae in terms of our administrative structures or legislation, we can fill them."
While there was a need to combat racist tendencies in society, Mr O'Donoghue said, "I do not accept that there is an innate tendency to racism among Irish people."
He said the approach to the conference was one of consensus. "Our recent social and economic success owes much to the partnership structure in Ireland . . . We are trying to build a national consensus in relation to racism, and our delegation at the conference will reflect that," he said.
The Irish delegation will include officials from Mr O'Donoghue's Department and the Department of Foreign Affairs; Opposition TDs; Chief Supt Catherine Clancy from the Garda Racial and Intercultural Office; Mr Niall Crowley from the Equality Authority; and representatives from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Irish Traveller Movement, Youth Against Racism and Discrimination and the Association of Refugees and Asylum-Seekers in Ireland.
Mr O'Donoghue said the Government had passed many new laws, set up administrative structures for handling asylum-seekers and foreign workers and increased staff in the immigration section of his Department from 20 people five years ago to more than 700, he said.
Mr O'Donoghue will stop off in Nigeria next Wednesday on his way to Durban to sign a readmission agreement to speed up the deportation of failed asylum-seekers.
This move has been criticised by refugee lobby groups and Nigerian organisations which held street demonstrations this week amid claims that the agreement will lead to asylum-seekers being treated as a group rather than as individuals. Ireland has a similar agreement with Romania.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties said statistics on the success rate of refugee applications showed "beyond contradiction that the rate of rejection of Nigerian and Romanian claims through the manifestly unfounded procedure has increased at an alarming rate, which can only be the result of a policy of presuming such claims, as a class, to be unfounded".
The Minister vigorously rejected this yesterday, saying Ireland upheld international refugee law, and all asylum claims were considered individually by an independent authority.
AFP adds: President Bush said yesterday the United States would not attend the conference unless Washington was assured the meeting would not carry anti-Israel overtones.
"We will have no representative there so long as they pick on Israel, as long as they continue to say Zionism is racism," Mr Bush said at a news conference in Washington.