The integration into our society of the 11 per cent of our population who are not ethnically Irish would be greatly facilitated if they were spread evenly throughout the area of the State, writes Garret FitzGerald.
But, inevitably, they are not. Instead, they are concentrated in our cities and towns. In these urban areas almost one-sixth of the population is not ethnically Irish - as against only one-fourteenth in rural Ireland.
Moreover, even within urban Ireland the new ethnic groups are very unevenly distributed.
There exists an important minority of towns where the non-Irish population at the time of last year's census averaged just over 11 per cent. But there were also 15 towns where 20 per cent of people fell into this category, and there were even three towns - Killarney, Longford, and Monaghan - where this percentage reached almost 30 per cent.
Even more striking is the situation in the centre of Dublin, where almost 40 per cent of the residents - indeed over 60 per cent in one ward - are not ethnic Irish, but are mainly east European or Asian.
The same was true of one-quarter of the inhabitants of Blanchardstown where, however, 7 per cent of the population was ethnically African, and where Africans and Asians together almost equal east Europeans.
At 15 per cent the non-ethnic proportion of the population of Balbriggan at the time of last year's census was above average, but not exceptionally so. However, at 6 per cent, the black Irish share of the town's population was much higher than in any other Irish town - almost at as high a level as in Blanchardstown. And because of the tendency of new ethnic immigrants to move to wherever a group of them are already established, the influx of more Africans to rented accommodation in Balbriggan this spring was eminently foreseeable. It is therefore difficult to understand how the Department of Education seems to have been taken by surprise by this development.
But while the Government's capacity to influence the location of immigrants other than asylum seekers is, of course, limited, it nevertheless has two key potential roles in assisting the eventual integration into our society of those immigrants who may decide to remain here permanently.
First, the Government can move to help immigrants to acquire a command of English that will facilitate their integration into Irish society. This is particularly true of the eastern European immigrants who, because of their generally high level of education and skill, have a potential to contribute much more to our economy if only their English-language skills could be enhanced.
The second way in which the State can both safeguard educational standards and promote ethnic integration, with a view to avoiding the danger of longer-term ethnic tensions, is by actively preventing the concentration of immigrant children in particular schools.
No school should be allowed to comprise an overwhelming majority of ethnically non-Irish children, who in many cases start with little command of English. The educational standard of the Irish children in such a school will be liable to suffer, and if the numbers of immigrant children are too high, they will be discouraged from integrating with their Irish schoolmates.
International experience has, I believe, suggested that ethnic minorities should not be allowed to exceed 30 per cent of any school population.
The early achievement of that target should become the firm policy of the Department of Education, with a judicious use of school transport facilities towards that end.
There is no evidence, however, that this urgent need has yet been grasped by either State or church. Indeed, as was pointed out in last week's article, by their attempt to restrict entry to some at least of their schools to children who are baptised Catholics, the church authorities in Dublin have inadvertently aggravated this problem.
I was taken aback, and indeed astonished, 10 days ago to hear Mary Hanafin, a Minister for whom I have great respect, remarking dismissively on radio with respect to the Balbriggan situation that the issue there was only one of skin colour and not of race - apparently because the children involved are Irish-born?
Surely she cannot seriously believe that skin-colour has nothing to do with racial tensions, and that such tensions will not arise so long as the African ethnic children are born in Ireland.
More generally, it is not clear why the Department of Education has failed to plan school requirements ahead. After all, that department has had available to it from each census the necessary data on the numbers aged 0-4 in each of 320 different areas of Dublin and in well over 3,500 other parts of the country.
In conjunction with details from each county council of planning approvals for housing, this data provides all the data needed for this purpose.
The department also has had available to it from the same source details of the nationality of people in each of these 4,000 areas. And four months ago this nationality data was supplemented by data on the ethnic composition of each of these areas.
Given the ready availability of all this information, there can be absolutely no excuse for failure to assess and provide for future primary education needs.
Available census data shows that in two-thirds of the Dublin area the numbers in primary schools are remaining static or more often are going to fall. In a number of areas this suggests the need for consolidation of schools.
But the census data also shows that primary school needs are about to increase by 50 per cent throughout all of the eastern part of north county Dublin, by 35 per cent in or around Blanchardstown and Castleknock, and on average by up to one quarter in a small number of areas south of the Liffey such as Newcastle, Rathcoole, Saggart, Kilmainham, Sallynoggin and Glencullen - although future needs in some at least of these latter areas might be met by schools in neighbouring areas where numbers are actually falling.
The census data also shows an urgent need to forestall ethnic concentrations, or in some cases to deal with existing problems of over-concentration of some ethnic groups which has arisen in schools in parts of Blanchardstown as well as Balbriggan - and also in the city centre, where, however, spare capacity in some existing schools could make it easier to deal with this problem.
Similar issues are arising throughout the country. It is time for all these pending needs to be tackled efficiently by the Department of Education, the performance of which in this respect could usefully be examined by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education and Science as soon as it has been reconstituted.