New ESRI Study reveals Discrimination against People with non-Irish Names

A recent study has found clear evidence of discrimination by Irish employers against people with non-Irish names.

The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Dublin conducted this new research into the treatment of Irish and non-Irish job applicants.

As part of the study the researchers sent out 500 CVs in response to job advertisements.
Pairs of CVs with matching details but different names were sent in response to 250 jobs ads.
The two fictitious applicants for each job had identical qualifications, skills and experience. But those with common Irish surnames were more than twice as likely to be called for an interview than people with foreign sounding names.

According to the ESRI's team of researchers, the level of discrimination revealed in Ireland is high, compared to other countries.

Richard Fallon from the Equality Authority said that the findings point to "a needless loss of opportunity" if employers do not look at the skills behind names on job applications.

What the ESRI found out by sending fictitious job applications to Irish employers is no news to me. As my father was from Belgium, I have a surname that looks 'foreign' to most Irish people. And I have experienced discrimination by Irish individuals and institutions over many years.

Employers are only one element of the spectrum. Government offices, TDs, local authorities and their various sub-offices as well as individuals have treated me less favourable than friends and neighbours with typical Irish surnames. And it is still going on.
Almost every day the question I am asked most often by Irish people, after I introduce myself, is: "Where do you come from?"
No-one called Brennan, Hayes, Murphy, O'Neill or Ryan - to mention but five of the typical Irish names - will ever be asked such a question.

But this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. In the past I was refused benefits to which I was entitled like anyone else, my name disappeared mysteriously from lists on which it had been put in my presence, and it happens ever so often that some weird people simply abuse me verbally for being 'foreign', without any particular reason.

Among my friends and acquaintances are several individuals with 'foreign' names, and they had and have similar experiences as I do. An interesting example are two couples I know rather well. In both cases one of the partners is Irish and the other foreign, and they live in the same area of the same Irish town.
The Irish wife of my Austrian friend does experience more discrimination than the German wife of an Irish friend. So - just as the ESRI found out in their study - surnames do play a role in this.
I wonder if this only goes for obviously non-Irish surnames, or also for foreign names that came into Ireland in the past with various waves of migration, such as the Normans or the Huguenots.

But there is another element in regard to job applications that annoys me immensely. Every week thousands of people in Ireland answer job ads and send applications to companies, public offices and organisations. And only very few of them ever receive a reply. This, in my opinion, is rude, arrogant and uncivilised.

In several other EU countries there are rules (and even laws) that entitle any job applicant to a reply, and if it is only a three-line letter saying that the application is not successful. Thus people know where they stand and are treated fair and humanely.
In Ireland there are no rules, so most people never hear anything from potential employers they wrote to. They never know if their letters were actually received and read, and if so, why their job applications did not succeed. This should no longer be tolerated.
And if it needs a new law - in case employers' organisations are unwilling to introduce the matter as a common rule to their members - then we should have it.

The Emerald Islander

Foreign Accents and Irish Hyper-Xenophobia

I was listening to Pat Kenny again this morning, and one of the items on the programme today was the ongoing protest against the M 3 project, attempting to build a motorway through the Skryne Valley close to the ancient Hill of Tara, a protected site and for centuries the seat of the Ard Ri, the High King of Ireland.

Despite the fact that the site is indeed protected, on a United Nations list of endangered heritage sites and under a preservation order from the Minister of the Environment, road contractors working in the pay of the National Road Authority (NRA) did last Thursday move heavy machinery close to Rath Lugh, the ancient fort that protected Tara, and tried to begin work on the esker (a rounded high ridge made up of ancient river sediments - mainly sand, gravel and small rounded pebbles, though boulders and thin layers of silt also occur - dating back to the last ice age) underneath. Would they do that, the sand from the esker would run out and the whole esker - with the fort on top - would collapse.


So thankfully protesters who are camping close to the site were making noise and alerted Meath County Council as well as the media. And thanks to them the fort still stands as I write this.

But what annoyed me this morning was a significant amount of comments from people who phoned, texted and e-mailed Pat Kenny in the studio, complaining that one of the Tara protesters, named Ciaran, has an English accent. So? What does that have to do with the matter at hand?

Maybe he is English. So what? But with a name like Ciaran he is more likely from an Irish family living in England. But it does not really matter. As far as I am concerned, he could be from Kells or Kaliningrad, Tuam or Timbuktu. What does matter is that he stands up for our ancient heritage, which is under severe threat from the current government and its friends in the construction industry.

There were more comments on Pat's programme, suggesting even that Seamus Heaney, our greatest living poet and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was apparently "not really Irish" (since he was born in the North). I could not believe my ears. Who are these little Irelanders? Are they 26-county-fetishists?
Their ridiculous racism and hyper-xenophobia does even exclude the population of the six counties, who are Irish by blood, heritage and by right. I would recommend that those who sent such silly comments read Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Constitution (of the 26-county Republic) of Ireland.

But I am not really sure if these comments were actually real, or just part of a subtle campaign against the Tara protest, orchestrated by some people who have a financial interest in building the motorway, no matter what the price for the nation and our heritage would be.

How come that some of our people have suddenly problems with a man with an English accent protesting against the M 3 motorway, when they are happy with English accents in all other areas of modern Ireland, from business and trade to music, art, film and sports. If you take out all players with an English accent, there will be no Irish Soccer team left.

I can understand that some, especially elderly people who might still remember the atrocities of the Black-and-Tans from own experience, might react a little allergic to English accents. But in general there is in my opinion no place for such petty-nationalistic hyper-xenophobia in Ireland.
Not seldom such expressions are completely misguided. Two of my neighbours have very heavy Cockney accents, and one could well think they were English. Nevertheless, they are as Irish as the shamrock. Both were born here, but had to emigrate as children with their parents to London. They spent most of their lives there, and of course picked up the Cockney accent. But as soon as the "Celtic Tiger" gave them a chance to come home, they did. So what would the 26-county-fetishists say to them and their accent?

It is also interesting that certain people's xenophobia seems to be limited to the British and - in some places - also the Germans. They seem to have no objections to Dutch and French, Italians and Spanish, nor any other nationality. No problems with hundreds of thousands of Poles and Russians, Ukrainians and people from the Baltic states who live and work here. And there seems not even to be any prejudice against the now vast number of Africans in Ireland, even though many of them can't speak English and have no links with nor understanding of our country and culture. The only reason they are here is our recently acquired wealth, from which they want a piece for themselves.

So why still this ridiculous xenophobia against people with British accents? Maybe some people need to re-read the history books and check out where many of our great national heroes were born. They will find that a large number of those we revere came from outside Ireland, but gave their lives willingly for our freedom and independence.

I was not born in Ireland myself, and two thirds of my life I spent abroad. But if anyone would question me or my credentials and loyalty, I would tell them that I am as Irish as St. Patrick, Countess Markiewicz and Eamon de Valera. If anyone has a problem with that, or with my accent (which is often thought to be Dutch, even though it isn't and really accumulates various accents I acquired during my lifetime), I would be happy to tell them a thing or two, and show them my very long family tree with Celtic pride.

The Emerald Islander

Cassidy's (Driving) Law

Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (our parliament), does not often make political headlines. Like most upper houses in democratic systems, our 60-seat Senate is a much more quiet place than Dáil Éireann, the 166-seat (lower) House of Representatives, where debates are fought strictly along party lines.
Many of the Senators belong to political parties as well, but there is also a significant contingent of independents and the general tone of debates is more collegiate and often even friendly. And though the Senate is rather active in the production and discussion of legislation, its members seldom make the national headlines.

It came therefore as a surprise when Senator Donie Cassidy (right), the Leader of Seanad Éireann, shook the nation yesterday with a truly revolutionary proposal. The veteran Fianna Fail politician, who lost his Dáil seat in last year's general election and received his current position as a consolation price from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, obviously decided that he wants to be an active Leader of the Senate instead of being just parked in the upper house until the next election.

Donie Cassidy announced - all by himself - that Ireland's motorists should give up driving on the left side of the road and join the vast majority of the world's countries whose cars drive on the right side. The main reason for the Senator's suggestion is "to reduce accidents by foreigners accustomed to right-side motoring". Never mind the many Irish drivers who never passed a test and make the island's roads a constant hazard course, and never mind also that a change to right-hand driving would reduce the costs of motor vehicles as well as their insurance. It is once again the foreigners who are to blame for a proposed change to one of our so cherished and equally ridiculous traditions left behind by the former colonial power.

But not enough with a fundamental change of driving habits in this rather conservative country. No, there is more, as the Fianna Fail Senator really has it in for the (bloody) foreigners - most of them from right-driving central and eastern Europe - who meanwhile make up about 15% of our population, due to Ireland's massive economic growth over the past decade.
To punish them for coming here and doing all the jobs the newly rich Irish people are no longer willing to take, Senator Cassidy proposes that people from countries driving on the right should observe a general 80 km per hour speed limit on all Irish roads, compared with speeds up to 120 kilometres permitted for Irish drivers.

This idea is truly xenophobic, discriminating, ridiculous, impractical and probably even illegal and unconstitutional. Even if passed into law, it would never work, as it is totally unenforcable. Most foreigners driving in Ireland have an Irish-registered car. So how shall a Garda patrol know who is driving and if the person behind the wheel learned his or her skills in a country with a right-sided traffic system? The only way would be the display of another symbol on the car: a bright red F (for foreigner) perhaps, or maybe even the letters RM (for right-side motoring). Such a compulsory display would be unique, as no other country has ever sunk to such a low level of culture and common sense. In history such a marking policy would stand right beside the yellow star which Jews in Nazi Germany were forced to wear on their clothes at all times.

Besides our newly acquired European workforce, Cassidy's Law would also hit foreign tourists. Surprisingly, despite our ridiculously high prices and notoriously sloppy service, Ireland is still a popular tourist destination for visitors from Europe and the United States. They, too, should be limited to 80 km per hour when driving on our roads, if Senator Cassidy gets away with his idea.

"We have all of these people coming in from Europe and from America and because of the roads that they are used to driving on in their own countries it is a huge difficulty when they start driving here," Cassidy told our national broadcaster RTE. "I know when I go to America it takes me five or six days to adjust."

Well, I should admit that I am a little bit allergic against individuals who refer to other human beings as "these people". And I could not possibly comment on Senator Donie Cassidy's personal driving skills.
But from my own experience there are no problems for a well-trained and able driver in switching from one system of traffic flow to another. Over the span of my life I have driven all sorts of cars in many different countries: right- driven cars in right-sided and left-sided systems, as well as left-driven cars in left-sided and right-sided systems.
I have crossed deserts and mountain ranges, drove through jungles and across plains, and negotiated successfully the traffic on hundreds of motorways and in many big cities, without a single accident ever.

It is not foreigners who cause Ireland's traffic problems. It is actually a combination of too few roads in often bad conditions, too many untrained drivers and a still unsolved attitude problem with driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Another factor is the high proportion of goods transport on our roads, due to a severe lack of railway lines in most parts of the island. No speed limit for non-nationals will ever solve that!

Most traffic accidents are caused by our own people, and it would only be fair if the Leader of Seanad Éireann could acknowledge that. Most foreigners are better drivers than most of the Irish, as in almost all other countries they have much better roads, proper driving tests, and no one is allowed to drive until the test is passed. And regarding the tourists, well, only a small amount of them bring their own car to Ireland. They are mostly EU citizens from countries with vastly superior traffic conditions and have usually more experience. Otherwise it would not be the case that many Irish buses are now driven by Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and other continental Europeans! And 99% of the Americans on holiday in Ireland travel in organised groups, using tour buses. So none of the Senator's arguments wash and he should better forget very quickly his ridiculous proposal, else he might not only be the Leader of the Senate, but also the country's most prominent laughing stock.

However, as daft and impractical as his speed limit for foreigners is, the suggestion to change the driving system in Ireland from left to right makes a lot of sense. With the exception of the UK, several former British colonies, Japan and Thailand most of the world's countries have a right- sided traffic system. Thus cars and insurance are cheaper, and the flow of traffic across national borders is generally unproblematic. Sweden, the last continental European country to switch from left to right (in 1967) experienced no major problems with the change and has since greatly benefited from it.
So as much as I am shocked and appalled by Senator Cassidy's speed limit idea, I wholeheartedly salute him for the suggestion to change the traffic system. If he sticks to that one, and presents it to the country in an unbiased and non-political way, it could (and should) succeed eventually.

The Emerald Islander
(driving on all sides as a true independent)