O’Conall Street

The liberal rally call of the nineties multiculturalism is loosing its shine amongst Ireland’s most progressive thinkers. The experiences of the Netherlands, France and Denmark has caused a major rethink as to how best accommodate a multiplicity of cultures and faiths without affecting the integrity of a society. The issue is moving on from asserting difference to seeking appropriate integration.  

Today’s debate surround the decision by a community college principal in Co Wexford to seek official state guidance on the wearing of the hijab. The Republic has no law governing the wearing of religious regalia in school. I am not sure what the position is north of the border but suspect there is uncertainty here in policy terms also.

In the North I only wish we could get to the point where this level of debate was possible. The sad reality is that we cannot even bring ourselves to confront our own elephant in the room. The Executive has to date failed to publish any policy on community relations nor has it addressed in a meaningful way issues of broader cultural and ethnic identity. This is one debate that could usefully take place on an all island basis, the North benefiting from the experience of multi-ethnic communities in the south and the south benefiting from the north’s approach to the underlying issues of sectarianism which are pervasive across this island.

Of course this would require proactive policy development and debate in each jurisdiction. I fear neither will happen and we will continue our merry march into denial in the ’six counties’ whilst ignoring the issues in the ‘free state’.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 8:10 am and is filed under Business, Corporate Communications, Current Affairs, Politics, Public Affairs, Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.