FORMER EUROPEAN commissioner Peter Sutherland has warned of “ethnic polarisation” developing in Irish schools unless more is done to promote integration.
Mr Sutherland, a special representative of the UN secretary general for migration, said Ireland needed to pour energy into creating shared experiences in education and suggested creating obligatory community service for school graduates. “Simply put, we cannot expect people to integrate into our societies if we are all strangers to one another,” he said.
At an event yesterday organised by the Immigrant Council of Ireland, he said there should be investment in experiments that brought children together in camps during the summer and created shared experiences.
Mr Sutherland, who also chairs Goldman Sachs International, said Ireland was promoting integration in some ways, such as allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections and opening Garda recruitment to non-Irish.
However, he said, Ireland’s performance as measured by the migrant integration policy index – which ranks developed countries on key indicators – was “nothing to write home about”.
It found Ireland was among the least prepared to help newcomers to do well in school and put it 28th on labour market mobility.
Latest figures from the 2011 Census show Ireland is more ethnically diverse than ever.
About 20 per cent of residents in Dublin were foreign-born, according to the census. This rises to between 50 per cent and 70 per cent in some inner-city electoral districts. Nationally, about 12 per cent of students are non-Irish nationals.
Mr Sutherland said there was a danger a breakdown in institutions that once brought us together as a community was dividing people. There was “dramatic” evidence of ethnic polarisation in schools throughout much of Europe, with minority representation in some schools exceeding 80 per cent.
“Why should we care? The evidence shows us that greater segregation leads to lower employment, lower earnings, lower education participation,” he said.
