Fianna Fail deputies and senators are reported to have been incredulous yesterday when confronted with evidence that the economy will continue to grow strongly over the next decade and that the State's population could grow by one million to reach 4.6 million in the year 2010. Many of their constituents are just as surprised. It was a very good idea to confront the Fianna Fail meeting with this kind of research, the consequences of which are at last being taken seriously by economists and some State agencies. But it ought to be taken equally seriously by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, which has responsibility for immigration controls. Evidence is accumulating daily that the economy faces a growing shortage of skilled and unskilled labour as unprecedented levels of growth continue. Whether it concerns wage drift in the construction industry, the growing involvement of women in the workforce, the return of highly qualified Irish emigrants from the United States, the difficulty faced by smaller firms in recruiting labour, or the declining overall rate of unemployment, the evidence all points the same way. It also underlies the Government's approach towards directing unemployed people back into the workforce, and, indeed, its philosophy on a minimum wage.
Ireland's recent non-inflationary growth and economic development has been based in good part on the capacity to draw on these various sources of surplus labour. Now that they have tightened up it has belatedly come to public attention that this State may be undergoing an historic transition from an emigrant to an immigrant society. If this is so, it is not at all surprising that political and economic refugees should be attracted to our shores in search of sanctuary, welfare and - eventually - work. This, after all has been the experience of many generations of Irish people who left this country to seek more hospitable and rewarding labour markets elsewhere in the world.
Rather than turning such people away as a matter of course and in a way which gives Ireland an increasingly inhospitable reputation, it would be better to start planning for immigration and adapting public policy to enable those who come here in search of employment to find a welcome. Given Ireland's position in world markets as an open trading economy it is only to be expected that more and more such people will be of a different ethnic and racial background to ourselves. All the more reason to develop policies to cater for a greater multiculturalism. Not only is this politically and ethically the decent thing to do; according to the economic evidence, it would be commercially prudent and profitable as well.
Alongside the most disadvantaged refugees to reach Ireland in the last several years - many of whom are housed in the most disadvantaged and therefore most ill-equipped parts of Dublin to welcome and receive them - there are many more non-citizens who have come to avail of employment opportunities. As one economic commentator has pointed out, it is hypocritical and counter-productive to drive policy by short-term and ill-sighted hostility to these few thousand immigrants. Another has called for an immigration policy to match labour supply and demand in this growing economy, and which would give it a competitive advantage. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform please copy.