Madam, - Sarah Carey (Opinion, November 12th) makes a series of ill-informed comments that are completely ignorant of the status of the National Action Plan Against Racism (NPAR), its remit, and the work it has been doing over the past four years.
As the chair of the steering committee of NPAR, I wish to set the record straight.
The National Action Plan Against Racism had its genesis in two events. First, the large scale immigration over the past decade which accompanied (and was required to sustain) our economic growth. Second, at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in South Africa in 2001 the Government gave a commitment that we, along with all other UN member-states, would develop our own action plan against racism.
Thus, in January 2005 NPAR was born with a four-year remit in which to complete its work. As such, it is a specific Government plan, operating directly from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, and staffed by civil servants who have a wide range of responsibilities of which NPAR is just one.
To suggest as Sarah Carey does, that NPAR is at a remove from Government and has been part of the recent review of state agencies is factually incorrect.
I don't know if Sarah Carey realises this, but the organisations she cites in her article as working positively on integration - county councils, the HSE, and the GAA - have all been encouraged to do so and provided with funding by the National Action Plan Against Racism.
A further key element of NPAR's remit was to directly identify and fund schemes and organisations that worked with and provided services for anti-racism schemes on the ground. In four years we have funded 110 separate groups and organisations to attempt to ensure the scourge of racism does not emerge in modern Ireland.
In fact we even provided funding to one of Sarah Carey's neighbours - the Summerhill Active Retirement Group in Summerhill Co Meath - which she cites approvingly in her article.
How do you measure success in combating racism? That is an impossible question to answer. But, as I have been keen to emphasise in recent weeks, given the new economic context. and with the overwhelming majority of the 420,000 foreign nationals living here (according to the latest Census data) set to stay in Ireland, the Government must keep integration and interculturalism to the fore of national policy.
Sarah Carey is entitled to criticise any body that she may take issue with. But to do so on the basis of misrepresenting the status and role of an organisation she is attacking is simply ill-informed and lazy journalism. - Yours, etc,