Ever feel you had to do something even though you really don’t want to do it. You know you see an opportunity and oh it is just so good you can’t resist but then you pull back and let sense prevail. I had one of those moments when Fine Gael TD Brian Hayes and Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames came out with different calls on immigrants. Brian Hayes called for “segregation” of non-English speaking students in schools and Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames came out with calls for English language tests at airports. Now it would be easy to go Oh the Blueshirts are back to their roots, or call racism. And taunt the Fine Gaelers in the world. But that would not be fair.

First off both or idiots they have both put themselves up to be called racists their language should have been an awful lot clearer.
Basically what Brian Hayes meant was that having mixed English ability students in classes meant that the English speaking students were held back because the teacher needed to spend time teaching the non-English speaking kids English, and the non-English speaking kids were held back as they could not get dedicated English speaking classes. This is not racist while it is debatable whether it has merits is debatable. But these are the issues we have to tackle and these are the types of ideas we have to debate in a sane manner without bring in the R word. If we are afraid to express these kinds of ideas in public then radicalism will build up in private.

As for Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames of Language tests at airports. That is brilliant as most people from Cork would not be allowed back into the country as they would consider boy and like as punctuation which they are not CK.