What Is The Current Politics In Ireland?

Do you think Ireland will embrace the concept of ethnicity or identity politics as in New World countries?

• Given that this is their first brush with mass immigration coming to rather than from Ireland.

• Answer:

  And I'm sure the Native Americans agree with you Rose Edit: This answer comes after the 3 thumbs up, they refer specifically to my response to Rose. In my own experience, people often find the terms ethnicity & nationality confusing, the things that determine what Nationality you are can actually quite complex & are not necessarily linked to ethnicity. For some people the issue of nationality is quite simple, one is born in a particular place & one assumes both citizenship & nationality, the fact that there are legal instruments that dictate otherwise - in the UK, in law if you are born after 1983 you take the nationality of your parents & in the Republic of Ireland, after 2004. Take my own case, I was born in one country, I am entitled to citizenship & nationality by law in that country but ethnically I am Irish, I was raised in Ireland, I identify with everything Irish, it is my choice to be Irish. If I were to abide by the simplistic notions of some people what it is to be Irish, I would be travelling on the other country's passport. While there are ethnic groups who have the Irish passport, have the accent, wear the jersey & speak an cupla focail Gaeilge because they were coerced into like the rest of us at school, they don't identify with our history, may not identify with our culture. To be ethnically Irish is to be white & trace your history back several generations in a particular place. I think the issue of ethnicity has been largely ignored, unless you're an academic, because of the relatively small numbers settling here. Given the apparently 'large' scale recent migration from Eastern Europe & the number of refugees & asylum seekers settling, Ethnicity & Nationality will become more of an issue and something that will have to be explored especially as Ireland doesn't have the get out clause that England, Scotland & Wales have where one can be British but ethnically different with no connections to any of the 3 countries.