Rising levels of racism and hate are not being tackled with the energy needed to “meet the scale and urgency” of the problem, Ireland’s special rapporteur on racial equality has said.
Dr Ebun Joseph, in her first report to the Oireachtas, which was published on Wednesday, said tackling racism “is more critical now than ever”.
“Ireland is experiencing a visible rise in far-right activity, racist rhetoric, and racially motivated attacks, alongside persistent inequities in the labour market,” her report states.
“While progress on inclusion has been made the pace of change remains insufficient to meet the scale and urgency of the challenges we face.”
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The first monitoring report on implementation of the 2024 National Action Plan Against Racism states that “structural racism” persists across public services including in the areas of employment, housing, health and education.
In terms of outcomes in employment and education, Irish Travellers suffer the worst discrimination, she says, with an unemployment rate of 61 per cent – eight times the national average. Black or black Irish people have a 16 per cent unemployment rate – double the national average, and Arab communities have an unemployment rate of 21 per cent.
Travellers have the lowest education attainment, with just 4.7 per cent having third-level qualifications, it notes.
“This is an indictment of systemic neglect,” the rapporteur says. “Low attainment at this scale does not emerge from lack of ability or aspiration; it emerges from structural barriers, chronic underinvestment, racism, and exclusionary policies that consistently undermine participation and progress.”
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The report notes high education attainment among Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi, Arab and Chinese groups. However, there is a “paradox of achievement and inequality” with many in these groups “increasingly over-represented in higher education but underrepresented in leadership and employment,” Joseph said.
Her report notes rising anti-migrant sentiment as seen in increasing online hate, attacks on international protection applicants and on International Protection Accommodation Service centres.
Government policy includes “mixed signals on the benefits of migration”, she said.
A key issue for those hoping to tackle the problem is a lack of reliable, disaggregated data across Government and State agencies, detailing minorities’ experiences of services, policies and initiatives. She calls for a strengthening of data systems and legislation to ensure standardised ethnicity data across the public sector.
Consideration should also be given to including ethnicity as a measure when companies report their gender pay-gap, to illuminate outcomes for different groups in the workplace, the report states.
Hate speech legislation should be “urgently” updated and a hate crime strategy developed to include “uniform national guidelines so that all institutions apply the same definitions, procedures, recording and reporting standards for hate crime”, it adds.
Among other recommendations are that antiracism education be core subject in the school curricula and that all public sector staff undergo continuous, mandatory antiracism, equality, and cultural competency training.
“The first year of monitoring reveals that implementation remains procedural rather than transformative, and the shift from awareness to systemic change remains incomplete,” says the author.
“Sustained political will, cross-departmental accountability, robust data systems, and genuine community participation are essential to translate commitments into tangible outcomes and ensure that policy commitments equate to lived equality.”
