Irish people growing more tolerant

Irish prejudices on the decline - MacGréil


Deirdre Gavin

The topic of Irish prejudices has been the subject matter for a major work by Sociologist Fr MicheΡl MacGréil, Loughloon, Westport and Dublin. Last week saw the publication of his book Pluralism and Diversity in Ireland. Prejudice and Related Issues in Early 21st Century Ireland. The launch was performed by Eamon Ó Cuiv at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin.
The book is based on a national survey carried out by the ESRI between November 2007 and March 2008. This is the third in a trilogy on intergroup attitudes in Ireland and shows the changes in Irish prejudices between 1972 and 2008.
The findings of the 2007-2008 survey are, on the whole, quite positive and give Ireland a relatively tolerant profile in relation to most of the fifty-one categories tested. The author attributes this to a number of changes in socio-cutural conditions like the arrival at an acceptable outcome to the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’ and an ongoing rise in educational participation and achievement.
One of the most notable topics discussed in the publication is in relation to the above average prejudice scores. These prejudices are found mostly in the 18 to 25 year old category.
The category to improve the most since 1988-89 in social distance scores are gay people whose ‘admission to family’ scores increased dramatically over the years. In 1988 the figure was at almost 13 per cent but in 2008 this figure has jumped to almost 63 per cent.
The ‘peace dividend’ following the changes in Northern Ireland situation has been confirmed in the changes in the attitudes and opinions  of the national sample towards Britain and Northern Ireland.
According to Fr Mc Gréil, in the week that Queen Elizabeth II and David Cameron visits Ireland, changes in the anti-British scale results show appreciation of the positive role of the British establishment in helping to bring about the new situation of greater cooperation within Northern Ireland.