The State should apologise to the descendants of those Jewish people who had sought a safe haven from terror in Ireland and found none, the Fine Gael leader said.

A recent RTE television programme had examined Ireland's attitude to Jewish people escaping Nazi Germany and found it wanting, said Mr John Bruton. "It showed clearly that the closed door facing Jews here had little to do with neutrality, as claimed at the time, and much more to do with the anti-Semitic tone of this country."

Mr Bruton, speaking during a debate on racism, said that even today it was not as if Ireland was asked to accommodate an exceptional number of asylum-seekers. In the few years up to this month, there were 5,400 asylum-seekers, whereas the Netherlands, a smaller country, had 120,000 and Switzerland had 70,000.

The leader of Democratic Left, Mr Proinsias De Rossa, said the decision by the Minister for Justice to scrap the Refugee Act was deplorable. The fact was that we were becoming a multi-cultural society and this trend was likely to continue, he said.

"The time when one could assume that a person walking along a street in Dublin who had a black face was foreign is long gone," he added. "People like Paul McGrath and Phil Lynott, whose achievements in different fields inspired so many people, are as much Irish as Proinsias De Rossa or Bertie ahern or John Bruton - or even Gerry Adams."

The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said he had told the House previously that he had implemented sections 1, 2, 5, 22 and 25 of the Refugee Act with effect from August 29th. Because of litigation, he could not appoint a refugee applications commissioner, an appointment central to the introduction of the remaining sections of the Act.

As a result, and following extensive consultations, a new arrangement was being put in place establishing a procedure to deal with the backlog of cases which stood at about 4,000, he added.