A rural elderly group's informal initiative is achieving greater results than the State's intercultural agencies, writes Sarah Carey
MORAL OUTRAGE being a necessary ingredient in a quality column, I had hoped to contrive some regarding the abolition of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism. Or, since a former colleague Lucy Gaffney is chairman of the National Action Plan Against Racism, perhaps work up the enthusiasm to lament its demise under the Government's war on quangos. So far, my irritation extends to the fact that my spellchecker rejects the term "interculturalism".
Despite the objections of Microsoft Word, one is all for interculturalism especially since 2008 is European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. I wonder though if throughout their existence, the NCCRI or the NPAR persuaded any racists to like foreigners? They have achieved much in the way of reports, research and the recognition of people who aren't racist, but I suspect that someone like Mary Nally does far more for "intercultural dialogue" than either agency has or ever could. And she doesn't cost much.
The three full-time employees and one part-time employee of the National Action Plan on Racism are civil servants who will be absorbed into the Department of Integration. Conversely, the NCCRI was set up as a private company and its employees will be made redundant. I am sorry for the staff, but two recent examples of its work show why the NCCRI is not worth defending.
When some schools found themselves under pressure to adopt a position on the wearing of hijabs they turned to the agency for advice. Guidelines were duly issued that were thankfully brief but of precisely no use to school principals. I could quote but the gist was "for the love of all monotheistic religions, don't expect us to say anything controversial. Hijabs are your problem."
Another piece of pointless work was promoted by a press release headlined New Report Shows Housing and Neighbourhood Planning Crucial to the Integration of Migrants in Ireland. As an exercise in stating the obvious, I doubt this report came cheap. The issue however, is not just money.
Effectiveness is the real test of any agency's existence. A "consultative committee" that recommends that school principals consult someone else on what Islamic schoolgirls should or shouldn't wear is not effective. If you want to know about effectively integrating a newly multiracial society, talk to Mary Nally instead.
Nally looks like anyone's respectable Auntie Mary and lives a few miles from me in the village of Summerhill, Co Meath. Two years ago, she was doing her shopping and observed a young south American woman and her young son at the same task. Nally was dismayed to see that the little boy was in charge of the job as he translated the labels for his mother. Without English, the woman couldn't even shop and like many immigrants, found herself dependent on her child for help.
Nally is well-known for her voluntary work with Summerhill's active retirement group Third Age and discussed the issue with her friends there. Shopping wasn't the only problem. Local medics revealed that immigrant children translated their parents' medical problems for them, which sometimes could be inappropriate. It's easy to say, "take English lessons", but outside a major urban centre, that's not straightforward.
The Third Agers also realised that lack of English was part of a bigger problem. Summerhill had lots of foreign residents, but no one really knew who they were. The language barrier made life hard for individuals but it also divided the community.
The woman was Maria Roman-Noriega, and women like her, stuck at home while their husbands work, have much in common with the elderly. Both groups are frequently isolated and casually assumed to have little use in a society that values paid work above all other activities. Elderly people might be suspected of possessing conservative views, but are often less judgmental than the young and, like most Irish people, tend to be racist only in the abstract. Perhaps having had to endure emigration in their youth, the Third Agers, when faced with a nice young woman with a big problem, were moved to help Maria and others in her predicament.
Before you could say "National Consultative Committee", Summerhill's community centre became the regular Tuesday night venue for free English lessons from pensioners to struggling migrants. Elderly people with time on their hands soon got the hang of helping confused foreigners fill out forms, translate documents or walk through lesson plans with titles such as "visiting the doctor". The immigrants were learning English while the pensioners, supposedly a drain on the economy, were making a huge contribution to local life. Noriega was only one of dozens of people transformed by the experience. She learnt the language and soon was serving traditional Argentinian food in her home for her new Third Age friends. That's integration and interculturalism served up on one plate.
The project is called Fáilte Isteach and with the help of a few quid from Denis O'Brien is being rolled out across the country through other voluntary groups. As Garret FitzGerald supposedly said: "That's all very well in practice, but does it work in theory?" Yes: it's called "mainstreaming".
There are some things the Government should do but can't. The Department of Integration, which supports Fáilte Isteach, admits it cannot ordain integration. Instead, it has decided to work with organisations such as county councils, the HSE and even the GAA to help them achieve what quangos cannot: results. This looks remarkably like common sense and no one, even Microsoft, should have a problem with that.