Almost invariably, all tended to paint Ireland as a country with rising anti-immigrant sentiment, where refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants are facing severe barriers to integration.

However, there is virtually no real evidence of this on offer. This is primarily due to the absence of real research on social conditions of migrants within Irish society and the resultant tendency to over-dramatise negative experiences some immigrants might have while living here in Ireland.

A recent research paper from the Centre for Economic Policy Research, titled 'The Social Assimilation of Immigrants', looked at the degree of integration of foreigners into European societies. The authors used European Union data to determine how successful immigrants were in socially integrating into the host country, based on migrants' own perceptions.

The main results of the paper can be summarised as follows.

First, migrants . . . particularly from non-EU origins - are at a disadvantage in the fields of social relations across the EU15.

Second, migrants tend to converge only slowly to the standard of natives, stressing the importance of time and continued residency.

Third, education has a significant impact on the type of social activities that individuals undertake, with more educated people relating less with their close neighbourhood, and more intensively with the broader community.

The study also found that across the EU15, immigrants' propensity to socialise with their neighbours was positively influenced primarily by marital status of an immigrant (with married couples being more likely to interact more frequently) and by the length of their stay in the country. The degree of social integration of foreigners was actually adversely affected by their employment status, with those in employment spending less time socialising.

The study provides some valuable insights into how foreigners integrate into Irish society and how we as a host nation compare with our EU15 counterparts.

One of the measures of social integration, mentioned above, is the frequency with which foreigners interact with their immediate neighbours. On average, 44% of native respondents said that they interact with their neighbours most days a week. For foreigners residing in the EU15 this figure was 30.3% . . . well below the natives' average. At the same time, in Ireland 56.7% of the natives and 50.5% of the foreigners interacted with their neighbours most days during the week.

Another measure is how often do people meet other people. On average, European natives stated that 40.6% of them met other people daily. EU15 average foreign residents had only 29.7% rate of response. In Ireland, the responses were 71.3% for the natives and 68% for the foreigners. These numbers might reflect the fact that majority of people-centred occupations, such as retail and other business-to-consumer services are increasingly being staffed by foreign workers. Then again, they might point to the fact that foreigners are more likely to live outside the city centre and face longer public transport commutes.

However, given that these results also translate across other questions, the data reveals two facts: 1) in Ireland in general people, both native and foreign, tend to have more social interactions with each other than in the majority of other countries within the EU15, and 2) foreigners living in Ireland tend to be far better integrated into our society than those living in other EU15 states.

One interesting caveat is that while immigrants living in Ireland had more than the EU15 average rates of social interactions, they reported virtually the same employment rates as the average. In other words, evidence does not appear to support a frequently alleged link between the employment status and social inclusion of the immigrants. If, for example refugees and asylum seekers are indeed experiencing significantly higher rates of social exclusion then this exclusion appears to have nothing to do with their working status.

Overall, there is a dire need for more extensive and better researched analysis of social and economic trends relating to migration into Ireland. However, given that international studies by disinterested researchers so far appear too often contradictory to the reports and statements issued by some Irish organisations seeking state funding for their own integration programmes, it is vital that such research be independent of our pro-interventionist affirmative action lobby.