Sunday, May 4, 2008

Ahern: Integration of immigrants is a 'big' challenge

The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said that the integration of immigrants in Ireland is one of the country’s biggest challenges.Speaking on RTE radio today, Mr Ahern said that integration of the “new Irish” should not be seen as a problem but as a challenge that has to be handled carefully.“I don’t say this as a downside, there are many upsides to this, when I took over as Taoiseach 11 years ago 1.5% of the workforce of the country was new Irish, today it’s 14.8%,” he said. “We shouldn’t see this as a problem but we must see it as a challenge – the integration of so much of the nations of the world, looking after the education, the new religions, the welfare, the extraordinary talents that many of these people bring. The challenges that some of them bring is going to be a big issue.”

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/?jp=mhgbauojidmh&c=

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

'the extraordinary talents that many of these people bring'.
My cant-ometer just went off the scale!
Are we being asked to subscribe to racism , and believe that the people arriving are superior to the people already here? ; that I reject.
Could we have an audit of the actual skills of these new 'Irish'?
I suspect that many who came here to do low paid jobs for bad employers, do not have skills or qualifications which will be useful to our economy over the next 20-30 years. How many have filed Patents?, could be easily answered by a Government.
As for the big challenge of integration? ; when the bath is over-flowing , the first thing to do is... turn OFF THE TAP.