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You're of course forgetting the simple fact that whenever the economy gets bad people blame a) their government, preferrably someone else's though, b) immigrants, they can't blame their own countryman after all, can they? and c) the great Sky-Monkey God or some such nonsense. The economy is bad and there happens to be a lot of immigrants, hence many of Eire's less-educated citizenry are throwing the blame for crappy Collateralized Debt Options to immigrants, instead of their own banks! The same thing is happening in many other countries by the way, including South Africa, Nigeria, Israel and the USA, to name just a few... I actually find it downright hilarious that commoners are so ignorant.

I went to Dublin in 1998 and vividly recall a similar track-suit toting loudmouth telling me to 'go home, Paki' and then following it up with a 'f-ing lesbian' because I was arm-in-arm with a friend.

I'm well travelled and worldly enough to know that public displays of racism isn't restricted to the streets of Dublin, and that the actions of a few do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of the many, but this journalist is just reporting the facts.

It would be interesting to hear what the Equality Tribunal rulings have been, and how authorities are planning to punish racist behaviour or racially-motivated crime.

This is a well-known story, the Irish, emigrants who, for instance, are responsible for 44 Americans claiming Irish ancestry; they themselves are resistant to immigration.

Those of you from heterogeneous, diverse places do not have any idea of what a homogeneous community, suddenly experiencing immigrations from much different places in the world, thinks and feels. Nor does anyone seem to care, because we are all suppose to be all accepting of immigration and people who are much different from ourselves. But that the fact that one Irish town would elect a black African as mayor shows, that as pervasive as prejudice may be within Ireland, people do transcend it.

Folks should just give the Irish awhile to get accustom with and accept the facts on the ground. Remember Negroes in the American South were still being beaten up for sitting at the same lunch counters as whites well into the 1960’s, 300 years after they were introduced into the country.

Let’s give the Irish a little time.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055041169

The above is a link to Ireland's most popular Bulletin Board website's lengthiest discussion of immigration.

As a reader, I appreciate the use of guaging Moore St's opinions as a stylistic vehicle for the piece. This and the whimsical travels of the writer around Dublin however are lacquered thick with one part faux-McCarthyism and one part cloying distain for the rough diamonds you portray these Dubliners as.

It is a testament to the quality of your publication that I can say, I am saddened to see this article bare your marque. It is a huge let down to know that Punch magazine's blithe and patronising editorial is alive and well when it comes to analysis of Ireland.

I realise that this is a lifestyle magazine first and foremost. Would it therefore, be terribly xenophobic to deduce a spot of healthy auld distain for Johnny ruddy foreigner, alive and well in Economist towers? Is there a yearn for the days of yore, when such a young blonde woman would pause to salute our proper and valiant narrator as "Sor" before accosting black men in the street? To say so would be sentimental and misguided. It is noteworthy however that this piffle first appeared as a "correspondent's diary" article in your sister publication.

What is certainly true is that this is article is a "pile of shite". To label this as the work of journalism would be most offensive.

I refer to Emily Bobrow's 2008 review of "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" By Dan Ariely (http://www.observer.com/2008/making-same-mistake-twice-and-why-smart-buy...). Your judgement(dear editor) should function as that of a cetus paribus journalist and editor. It does however function as that of a "shitehawk". Presenting this "article" in the Harry Winstons window that is this magazine you have served to inflate the Xenophobia of the Irish people with the writer's countless examples of partonising conjecture.

Your brand of pantomime analysis serves only to provoke. You have informed no one. You have misinformed your readers. As an Irishman and a Dubliner, I am not proud of the Xenophobia which exists in Ireland. With this flight of whimsy you have tarred me as a ignorant racist. Racism is something which i abhor in people.

This article is not an aside to substantive analysis, but a slur on Ireland, it being the only article on Ireland in that November issue of "The Economist".

I refer anyone who wants a sample of the attitudes of the Irish people on the subject of immigration to the link I posted at the begining of this comment. After reading the subject article, I would recommend this rather than the work of a thousand economist journalists, working for a thousand years, on a thousand typewriters.

This is in reply to those who claim that racism and xenophobia are displayed only by the under-educated in Ireland.

All of my non-Irish friends in Dublin have at least a Masters degree, and some of them have PhD's. They all work either in high-level elite corporations or in the best hospitals and universities of Ireland, and they have all experienced blatant and incessant xenophobic bullying and harassment in those institutions.

Bullying, hatrassing, excluding and exploiting foreigners
seems to be a fundamental element of Irish culture. This is apparently related to the fundamental belief of the Irish people that every foreigner who comes to their country does so with the intention of abusing them, a belief which is endlessly pounded into Irish minds by the nationalistic Irish education system, and which seems to be a central part of the manner in which Ireland has chosen to build its national identity myth.

This perception of eternal historic victimization at the hands of foreigners intensifies and justifies the xenophobia and racism already present in this homogeneous society which until very recently functioned as a collection of villages controlled by abusive local family cliques and subjected to suffocating domination by the Irish Catholic Church. Racism, xenophobia, chauvinism, homophobia and sexism are nearly universal in Ireland, and affect all classes of Irish society, including university professors and the business elite.

As a foreign student in Ireland I can confirm that xenophobia is everywhere. I am white, European, well educated and well-dressed, speak English fluently and my friends describe my manner as excellent. Despite this, I experience at least a few xenophobic attacks daily, some of them extremely disgusting. It almost looks like insulting foreigners without reason, bumping into them and calling them names, sending them nasty emails, bullying them in the workplace etc is a national sport in Ireland. Worst of all is that one can't bring this up with the vast majority of Irish people, in fact the intensity of the abuse *increases* if one dares to mention xenophobia to them. It is clear that Irish people are on a mission to terrorize foreigners out of their country, and that there is no level that they will not stoop below to take out their hatred on those who refuse to accept such behavior. The article is spot on, and in fact rather mild given my experience and that of all of my foreign friends.

I can affirm to the above. I worked here for almost 5 years and experienced exclusion, harrasment by arrogant irish men who thought that they were able to just sleep with me and nothing else. They couldnt understand morality or the fact that some people do not like to drink alcohol. In the workplace I was severly harrassed and bullied being more qualified than my irish counterparts i was subject to constant belittling and undermining. I was even insulted by a colleague with the boss present and he did nothing instead he went on his own campaign of bullying shortly after.

Ireland is severly racist and should stop pretending to be the friendliest nation on earth. The opposite is true.

I am a (white) American professional who worked in Ireland
for the past three years. I have to agree with a poster
above that the article is mild and does not make justice
to the level of abuse suffered by ALL foreigners
in Dublin. The xenophobia is out of control and I don't
know any foreigner in the city who hasn't been bullied
by her Irish colleagues. With due regard for the few
good people I have met, most Irish people are grossly
incompetent, lazy, abusive, alcoholic, devoid of any
manner and sickeningly xenophobic. They will stop at
nothing to bully you out of your job due to the
pathological envy which they all have towards
anyone who is better then them. Do what my Polish
friends do, get out of that hellhole and NEVER
do business with anybody from Ireland again.

Ireland is a lost cause, the European Union has wasted all that money for nothing. The corruption and incompetence are too deep, systemic, cultural, ingrained in all aspects of life. The whole place is nothing but a mafia system, likely to become a failed state. Too late to do anything about it. Whoever wants to have a future should get out of that bad joke, it will likely get thrown out of the EU altogether.

To Irish racists reading this and thinking how to spew forth further venom: before spitting your low self-esteem around, you might wish to learn how to WASH, and how to control your addictions. Ireland has one of the lowest hygiene standards in Europe. It also has the highest rate of binge drinking, and one of the worst obesity problems. Your economy will return to the stone age once all foreigners get out and the EU cuts off the spigot, as it is determined to do. Call us back when you are sufficiently civilized to deal with the modern world.

All of the above comments are probably accurate and relevant but it has to be put into context. Until the Celtic Tiger hit, Ireland had very very limited exposure to foreigners and people outside of Dublin had practically no exposure at all. Naturally with a boom comes development, education, travel, immigrants etc and Ireland was no exception to this. However, you can not expect a country to transform into a multicultural politically correct country over night.

People in their 30s and younger have benefited from the boom via free third level education, summers working abroad, diversified industries offering interesting career opportunities but this was not always the way. Older generations did not have the same opportunities and real exposure to the larger world outside of seeing things in books and on the TV. Intellect and education broadens a person’s mind but it is the real life experiences and exposures to worldwide realities that make a person really open minded and multicultural. A man can have read every book on African history but will inevitably sound ignorant on his first encounter with a black African man, although in his own head thinks he has shown how multicultural he is.

Ireland is going through what many other countries have gone through before as it strives to become a multicultural equal society. Is there any example of a country that flicked a switch on these types of issues and thereby avoided cultural conflicts during the transitional phase of cultural integration in society? Why do you now expect Ireland to be able to achieve this? It was not too long ago that London, a multicultural integrated city, had signs up in shop windows stating “No Dogs and No Irish”. I am sure there were equally as many offensive signs up for other nationalities too but London had to go through that transitional phase to get to where it is today.

Ireland has to go through this difficult phase and open debates on such issues can only enhance the process. But for goodness sake, be realistic about what to expect and deal with it in the same way you would if you visited any other country going through similar cultural shifts. If you are planning on moving to Ireland, do some research and know what to expect. If you go there with the disillusion that Ireland just accepts everyone because “the Irish are great old craic”, you would want to cop-on and read some history books.

How ironic that the two posters above manage to demonstrate two of the defects found so disgusting by foreigners in Ireland:

1. The amazing fact that Irish people manage to claim victimhood no matter how blatantly abusive they are towards others

2. The amazing fact that they manage to imagine themselves cultured and sophisticated despite the unbelieveable level of rudeness, drunkenness, primitivism and sheer ignorance which is so highly visible to everyone who spends a few hours in the place.

Yeah, we all all racists against the poor Irish who throw stones at us and beat us up, who tell us "go back to your country", "you have no rights here", "f**ing Pakistani, nigger, Polish, Russian, monkey (you fill it in)". You are all victims of those whom you threaten, exploit, abuse and beat up every day.

The actions of a few do not reflect ac ountries opinion, we have taken in many immigrants a few things are bound to happen, Dublin was voted friendliest city in 2008, strange isnt it?

maybe you're just a pr!ck? and people weren't telling you to go home because you are foreign but simply because you are a pr!ck? I'm Irish and I treat everyone the same, if someones rude though I'm rude with them.

you said something pretty racist yourself there chief

irish gypsys are not romany , romany are ROMA as in Romanian who originated in Pakistan and moved thru Germany to Romania, we have travellers in Ireland.

I am what you could call the average Irish man. In each of the last three places I have worked myself and several other local men have been laid off only to see lower paid eastern europeans take our jobs. Everywhere I go there are foreign neighbours, shops and drunk idiots on my streets and I for one have had enough. How can the Irish people tolerate these things when a polish man who is out of work for the last four years can get €600 for his daughters communion? He and countless other eastern europeans are robbing our country of money and trade.

It is time to remove all foreigners from our country by force if needs be. I along with several other young men will shortly take it upon ourselves to rid our town, Carrickmacross, of all its foreign people.

Heil Hitler

I think the journalist was hanging out with a lot of white trash. I live out in the countryside and we have many Eastern European and immigrants of African and Asian descent living here. And get this, I have never ever seen ANY RASCISM here and Dublin is 30 mins by car from where I live.

In fact, I see Irish people having a laugh, socialising and talking with non nationals here the whole time. I'm not saying rascism isn't here but seriously I am Irish and find a lot of Dubliners who are white trash just as bad to me, calling me a 'a dirty culchie' cause I'm from the country and not the city.

Saying that these were white trash and most normal Dublin folk are really nice and good craic to go out with. I didn't know that so many non nationals in Dublin had to go through this, it really angers me as an Irish man that these 'people' get away with it. But they are 'white trash'. Stay away from them please!! It's like moving in with rednecks in the US.

I notice that the non nationals when they first arrive are very serious and unfriendly and are nearly shocked when you are friendly to them. After a few weeks I notice them laughing and joking with the Irish like we have converted them to smile and laugh and have the 'craic'. Again this is my experience.

I think this xenophobia may be to do with our Island mentality. You see, anyone from the outside that came here invaded and plundered us throughout the ages and I think that is still in the Irish psyche. What we need to do is to educate our young citizens to accept everyone, even study Martin Luther King in our school syllabus.

I think the only foreigners that would have no problems here are Americans cause everyone loves America here.

But I am actually shocked by reading that article and the comments by non nationals living here. I never knew that. Those stupid xenophobic people are like the Irish version of red necks. Every country has them. Never knew we had so many, hope there are non nationals that can prove the journalist wrong with good experiences?