Members of the Travelling community, refugees, politicians - including the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey - and Joyce enthusiasts in contemporary dress celebrated Bloomsday together yesterday in Pavee Point, the Travellers' centre in Dublin.
Mr John O'Connell, one of the founders of Pavee Point, said they had taken the theme of "wandering rocks" in Ulysses in order to focus on specific forms of bigotry - religious bigotry against Protestants, anti-Semitism and racism, including anti-Traveller racism.
The Dublin Travellers' Education and Development Group had travelled around Dublin before finding its present home in the Free Church in North Great Charles Street, he said. Their take-over of the building was held up for quite a long time because of opposition to Travellers. But local politicians such as Tony Gregory and Joe Costello had helped to establish the centre.
The Free Church features in Ulysses, where "Father Conmee walked down Great Charles Street and glanced at the shut-up Free Church on his left. The Reverend T R Green will (D.V.) speak. The incumbent they called him. He felt it incumbent upon him to say a few words. But one should be charitable. Invincible ignorance. They acted according to their lights."
Senator Mary Henry, who spoke as a member of the Protestant community, recalled that Wesley, the founder of Methodism to which this church belonged, was a great wanderer. She said Protestants were thought to be associated with the British because of their religion. But huge numbers, especially in the country, had no links with the British.
Now Protestants in the Republic were a minority of a minority, feeling alienated from the majority of their co-religionists on the island by issues such as Drumcree.
Ms Ronit Lentin, speaking as a member of the Jewish community in Ireland, said her own family was a family of refugees. She recalled the common fate of Gypsies and Jews in the Holocaust. Jews were still Ireland's archetypal "others", she said. Their numbers had been ravaged by emigration, and now between 60 and 75 per cent of the Jewish community in Ireland was over 50.
Musicians Christy Moore and Liam O Maonlaoi, and actors Tina Robinson and Donal O'Kelly played music, sang and gave readings from Joyce, with members of the Traveller community musicians Michael and James Collins.