The Women’s Coalition on Immigration gathered inside Dáil Éireann—the lower house of the Irish parliament—on Thursday, June 18th, to urge the Irish government to introduce legislation allowing authorities to collect information on the ethnicity of individuals charged with violent and sexual offenses.
The event brought together politicians, legal experts, journalists, and campaigners, who argued that greater transparency is needed in public discussions surrounding immigration and its impact on Irish society.
Among those hosting and participating in the discussion was Dáil Éireann member Ken O’Flynn (Independent Ireland). The central message of the event was that effective migration policy must be built on accurate information and open public debate.
In a post on Facebook, O’Flynn argued that “good migration policy depends on good governance” and that good governance requires “honest data, transparency, and open debate.”
The politician said the public should have access to “clear information on migration,” including its effects on society and the implications of the EU Migration Pact. The meeting featured a number of speakers from political, legal, and media backgrounds, including Senator Sharon Keogan, South Dublin County Councillor Linda de Courcy, lawyer and commentator Nick Delehanty, journalist and coalition founding member Barbara McCarthy, and barrister Laoise De Brún, the founder of the Women’s Coalition on Immigration.
The coalition’s call for the recording of the ethnicity of criminals formed the focus of the gathering, with participants arguing that policymakers and the public need access to more detailed information when debating immigration policy and public safety issues.
The event comes in the broader context of decades of a pattern in which the ethnic or religious background of crime suspects is not immediately revealed to the public by the authorities and the legacy media, in particular when the victims are white, for fear of being branded racist or of the alleged risk of ‘fomenting racism’ and ‘discrimination.’ Recent grave incidents in which the perpetrators were of non-white immigrant background and the victims white further fueled the frustration of citizens with what is seen as two-tier policing and justice. In England, 18-year-old Henry Nowak was killed by a Sikh man in Southampton, after police officers on the scene decided the claim that Nowak had made a racial insult was sufficient grounds for handcuffing him, the actual victim, and letting him bleed out in the street.
In Northern Ireland, a Sudanese immigrant attempted to behead a man in broad daylight in Belfast. The horrific assault later prompted days of anti-immigration protests and calls for stricter regulation against violent and unchecked asylum seekers.
