On the surface, Ireland feels safe. It has that calm, unhurried rhythm. People smile at you on the streets. The crime rates are low. It ranks consistently high on the Global Peace Index, often placing it in the top ten. It seems like the kind of place where racism should feel out of place. Racism, after all, is an old-world problem; something that shouldn’t exist in this green, progressive island. And for a while, you might believe that.
But if you’re brown or Black or visibly different, you start picking up on things. Small things, at first. Like people hesitating to take the empty seat next to you on Bus Éireann. Or turning away when you smile. Or choosing a longer path around you on the sidewalk. You brush it off. You’re new here, right? It must be in your head.
Then it happens again. And again. And then it stops being subtle.
Like when a group of teenagers hangs out of a moving car and screams, “Go back to your country!” at you during your walk. Sometimes they add slurs. Sometimes they just laugh and drive off. Or when you step into a high-end restaurant and the staff gives you the face — that slow once-over, that delay before you’re seated, that barely concealed suspicion that you don’t belong there. It’s not overt. It doesn’t come with fists or raised voices. It just lingers on your skin, long after the moment has passed.
You tell yourself to get used to it. This was your choice, after all. You left your country. You knew life abroad would mean trade-offs — a little discomfort, a little cultural friction. You convince yourself that racism here is tolerable, mild, survivable. That it brushes past you and moves on.
But lately, it doesn’t just brush past. It pushes.
The recent attack in Tallaght was a punch in the gut. A young Indian man, brutally beaten and hospitalised. Not an accident. Not a misunderstanding. A deliberate, violent act. It was the kind of incident that makes your stomach drop — not just for the victim, but for everyone who looks like him. Everyone who’s ever been told they don’t belong here. It shook us because it confirmed something we’ve all been feeling: that the racism we experience every day is no longer content staying subtle.
And the numbers back it up.
According to the Irish Network Against Racism (INAR), 600 reports of racism were made in 2022 alone. That included 223 reports of criminal offences (not even counting hate speech laws), 190 reports of discrimination, 42 other recordable racist incidents, and 136 cases of racist hate speech. That’s not a small blip. That’s a steady pattern.
Maybe it’s the rise in immigration. Maybe it’s fear, whipped up by stories about housing shortages and job competition. Maybe it’s just that old human impulse to blame the outsider when things feel unstable. Whatever it is, the air has changed. You can feel it.
I know people whose kids have been bullied at school for the way they look, or what they bring in their lunchboxes. Friends who’ve changed their names on CVs just to land an interview. People who’ve stopped taking walks after dark — not because they fear crime, but because they fear words. The kind of words that strip you of your dignity one syllable at a time.
So yes, Ireland is peaceful. Yes, it ranks high on all the right indexes. But statistics don’t always tell the whole story. Sometimes, the racism here doesn’t shout. It whispers. It sidesteps. It stares. And then one day, it punches.
And all we’re left with is this quiet, uneasy question: How many more punches will it take before someone listens?
We, at the ”Irish Indian Chronicle,” urge you to come forward and share your own experiences with racism — the subtle, the loud, the in-between. Your stories matter. And they deserve to be heard.
– Merin Rebecca Thomas