Enar Ireland’s Responding to Racism Guide is a new directory highlighting procedures of institutions and public bodies in relation to racism and discrimination.

The guide is a way of helping victims who are often neglected by the State to come to terms with their situation, as observed by Minister of State for integration, David Stanton, who urged members of minority groups who are victims of racism to use the guide — which he added was based “partially on the findings and feedback from some of the network members and the iReport.ie racist incident reporting system”.

Shane O’Curry, director of Enar Ireland, described the guide as a “comprehensive resource for victims and witnesses of racism, hate speech, discrimination and racist crime, on how and where to report and find help”. He added that victims “seeking institutional redress with respect to any form of discrimination” would find it valuable”.

Interestingly, Enar Ireland also hopes that its guide would be able to support minorities to strongly engage with institutions and public bodies in Ireland, in order to make them “more accountable and ultimately making our society more inclusive of its growing diversity”.

While we sincere hope that justice and equality reigns supreme, there is no gainsaying that such could only happen when the laws of the land are robust enough to guide against hate crimes. The minister and Enar Ireland must be reminded that there can be no proper breakthrough in the fight against such crimes unless the Government brings in the necessary legislation.

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