What are your views on Multiculturalism in Ireland? - Threadbanned User List in OP

And they will blame the Irish person and the Catholic Church if we ever did.

My question hasn't been answered, its just buzzwords and catchphrases. I'm asking why is cultural diversity good for us ? why is a diverse population better than the current population make-up or the population make-up of 50 years ago? If you don't want to or can't answer maybe you can link me to the multiple times this question has been answered because I can't find it.

Or are you just running from the question because there is nothing beyond the slogans and buzz words ?

Are we just doing this now ?

At it’s most basic level, diversity among any population reduces the risks of inbreeding, the lighter side of which is the, ahem, prominence as it were, of characteristics like what was called “the Habsburg jaw” among one European royal family -

https://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/habsburg-jaw.htm

They weren’t the only royal family who practiced inbreeding by way of maintaining their wealth and power among themselves, the Habsburg jaw is just the most commonly known deformity.

Cultural diversity which isn’t based upon biology, brings innovation and new ideas and leads to a better educated and informed society, as evidenced by the drop-off in adherence to religion that has been witnessed in Irish society in the last 50 years or so.

Economic diversity is as simple as not putting all one’s eggs in the one basket, or at least the “five baskets” which the Irish economy is dependent upon which are the largest contributors to maintaining our economy. I say maintaining, because they’re not contributing anything to economic growth. Every successive Government has been warned since the 80’s that the Irish economy needs to foster entrepreneurship, but their efforts so far have been poor. They’re still more interested in attracting foreign employers than they are interested in supporting entrepreneurs in Ireland. It’s a cultural thing.

It’s one of the reasons why entrepreneurs emigrate from Ireland to other countries where the conditions are much more favourable to entrepreneurship, and Ireland’s economy loses out, continuing to be dependent upon attracting large multinationals to provide employment instead of encouraging a culture of entrepreneurship in early education. Our education system is dominated by a single education provider whereas in other countries public education is a function of the State.

One of the truly unfortunate aspects of Irish history is that being on the periphery of Europe, and importing much of our cultural cues from the far side of the Atlantic, has led to an economy where we didn’t learn anything from the effects of the Famine which ravaged the potato crop across Europe. Ireland was the worst affected country because of our dependency on potatoes as a source of food, and subsequent years of crop failures, whereas other countries had already enjoyed the benefits of diversity and their populations weren’t decimated to anything like the degree that Irelands was, and in the years that followed the famine - the population was decimated even further by people emigrating to other countries where they saw better opportunities for themselves and their families.

Along with some of the posters here, Sammy Wilson from the DUP is in support for offshoring refugees to Rwanda too.

I appreciate you taking the time and actually providing arguments instead of just linking to Google and essentially saying "I know but I'm not telling you".

Inbreeding: Studies have shown that a population between 100-200 would be enough support enough genetic diversity. Some studies state that 50 individuals can combat inbreeding whereas a minimum population of 500 individuals was needed to reduce genetic drift. Your example of one royal family doesn't really map onto the entire country of 4,000,000.

Innovation and Religion: With the advent of the internet and the new tech landscape Ireland is one of the more innovative countries imo. Just look at the number of successful tech start ups we have produced in recent years as an example. To say the decline in influence of the catholic church is down to immigration doesn't stack up in my opinion, the majority of immigrants coming to our country would be more religious not less. The church scandals, the internet (consumption of American media) and increased access to education in Ireland is what lead to the decline of the Catholic church here.

Economic Diversity : The Government doesn't support enough Irish Entrepreneurs? I agree, more funding should go into small, medium businesses and start-ups here. I'm not sure how this is a argument in favour of multiculturalism and mass immigration. The multi-national start-ups we have attracted here have lead to many new businesses and entrepreneurs here take advantage of new opportunities but there is always more can be done. Not sure its a cultural thing but its certainly something that can be explored when the money is available.

Single provider Education: We were a country that had a rough go of it there for a while, I'm sure you are aware. The only people providing education were the religious orders which was the case in most countries the world over if you go back far enough, see all the old universities and colleges in Britain, America, etc they were all founded by religious groups. Again I'm not sure why state school education is an argument in favour of multiculturalism unless you are saying that immigration has forced the purview of education from the religious orders to the state which as I stated before is not true in my opinion. That shift occurred in Ireland because of evolving Irish attitudes, unless you are saying that Irish attitudes and ideas cannot evolve or change without outside influence ?

The F word : As was discussed by another poster our dependence on the noble spud was because it was the easiest and most nutritious food Irish people could grow on their tiny allotment of land when all other crops and produce were being stolen and shipped eastwards. It was not because we were thick and need multiculturalism to show us rice and pasta exist.

Apologies if I have rambled or gone off point in parts, its been a long day.

Again thanks for actually engaging even though I disagree with you I appreciate it.

Respectfully mate, what the fcuk are you on about? You’ve injected a whole load of your own nonsense into my post and twisted it to suit your own narrative.

I did say we had a dependency on the potato, but that in no way suggests that we were only capable of growing one thing. The fact is that because of the failure of the one crop we were dependent upon, the people of Ireland starved. I dunno what the self-loathing bigot thing is about, I wasn’t responsible for anyone starving, wasn’t around at the time. That’s a smartarse point, if you need one.

At no point have I ever suggested I wanted nothing to do with the Church? I’m a practicing Roman Catholic. I’m not interested in defending what people did in the past, as that could lead to me being biased and defending the indefensible. As someone who reads history I’m sure you’re no doubt aware of the transfer of power from Westminister to Rome via Dublin Castle.

You appear to be arguing that diversity means allowing oneself to be controlled, I dunno what way you’re choosing to mangle the English language to make your point, but I’ve done my best to at least try and figure out where you’re coming from in good faith, as opposed to presuming you’re determined to continue to make a complete balls of any discussion.

To certain people/groups their idea of equality is instead of raising the 3rd World up to our quality of life and standard of living. Its actually lowering us to 3rd World Status. Then in their minds equality will be reached.

Genetic diversity: Inbreeding among the royals was but one example, and I did point out that it was on the lighter side of the argument. A far more widespread example of the necessity of genetic diversity is the fact that CF is widespread in European populations, and it’s of a much higher prevalence in Ireland. CF is the sort of double-edged adaptive evolution that one would assume should have died out long ago, but it was discovered that the disease also provided immunity against other diseases, notably at the time the Black Plague -

https://www.news-medical.net/amp/health/Cystic-Fibrosis-Evolution.aspx

Genetic diversity isn’t just about the propagation of one particular genotype, and the studies you’re referring to are predicated upon making the assumption that the people involved are all on-board with the idea of bumping uglies with people they aren’t necessarily attracted to (which could go a long way towards explaining the necessity and development of alcohol as a social lubricant 😏).

I didn’t mean to suggest the decline of influence of the Catholic Church was down to immigration. I meant to suggest that it’s decline was as a consequence of other influences which led to apathy towards the authority of the Church in Irish society. Their current form is a former shadow of itself. Ireland wasn’t particularly diverse when they ceded authority to the Church to do their dirty work of keeping undesirables out of sight of civilised society. The increased access to education was the greatest influence - in teaching people to read and write, the Church effectively sealed it’s own fate.

The aversion to entrepreneurship IS a cultural thing, exemplified in your own attitude towards entrepreneurship - that it can be explored when money is available. The onus is on Governments to make the money available through investment in entrepreneurship, and their investment leads to employment in a range of industries, as opposed to being dependent upon the big five multinationals which we’re currently dependent upon, and almost shat the bed when Trump claimed he had plans to bring American companies back to America to provide American jobs. Our economy is still at the mercy of American multinationals. This is what I mean when I say we need economic diversity, because it means independence from setting up smaller feeder businesses dependent upon multinationals choosing to stay in Ireland. Instead of Stripe announcing 1,000 jobs in Ireland, it could have been Stripe providing thousands of jobs in Ireland -

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/jobs-news/stripe-jobs-engineering-dublin

You asked why diversity is of any benefit to society, and I’m giving you the benefits to society from a number of different perspectives. It’s not just about multiculturalism, it’s about diversity, and that includes diversity in education, which is why I made the point that there is one player in the Irish education system which dominates education. Ireland is something of an outlier in this regard in European terms, even compared to the US in which public education is funded by the Federal Government, and there isn’t one dominant player in the education system. That’s what I mean by diversity in education. It’s not a slight against the Catholic Church or religion or any of the rest of it. The point is about diversity in education and how that benefits a society.

Our dependence upon the potato came about by way of a few different factors -

The potato was introduced to Ireland as a garden crop of the gentry. The potato was not popular at first; however, after an unusual promotion campaign that was supported by landowners and members of royalty, who wanted their tenants to plant and eat the crop, it rose in popularity. By the late 17th century, it had become widespread as a supplementary rather than a principal food; the main diet was still based on butter, milk, and grain products.

With the "expansion of the economy" between 1760 and 1815 due to the Napoleonic wars (1805–15), which had increased the demand for food in Britain, the tillage increased to such an extent, that there was less and less land for small farmers, and the potato was chiefly adopted by the people because of its quick growth on a comparatively small space. By 1800, for one in three of the population, the potato had become a staple food, especially in winter. It eventually became a staple year-round for farmers. The widespread dependency on this single crop, and a disproportionate share of the potatoes grown in Ireland being of a single variety, the Irish Lumper i.e. the lack of genetic variability among the potato plants in Ireland and Europe, were two of the reasons why the emergence of Phytophthora infestans had such devastating effects in Ireland and in similar areas of Europe.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

I don’t think you went off the point, so much as you missed the point. It obviously wasn’t intentional and I think you got stuck on the idea I was arguing the benefits of immigration, when I was arguing the benefits of what you’d asked - the benefits of diversity to a society.