His early weeks in the job haven't done much to allay such worries, particularly during the current controversy about whether a garda reservist, a Sikh gentleman, should be allowed to wear his turban while on the job.

After the Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy ruled such sartorial eccentricity out of order, he was immediately backed by Lenihan.

"If we are to take integration seriously, " the minister said, "people who come here must understand our way of doing things. When the president and ministers travel to the Middle East, they accept cultural requirements of the country and the culture they are operating in. It is a vice versa situation with regard to Ireland."

Let's pause there for a moment, and travel back in time, to January of this year, to see what he might be talking about. In the second week of that month, the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern led a delegation of ministers, officials and business people to Saudi Arabia on what was described in the media as a "trade mission." Accompanying him were the Minister for Education Mary Hanafin and the Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan, two of the more capable members of cabinet. Both of them, you might have thought, would have been there as equal members of the team, with plenty to offer in the talks and discussions that take place on such missions.

The most memorable photographs of Hanafin and Coughlan during that trip were of the pair of them, on the sidelines of whatever event was taking place, sitting with their heads covered.

Saudi Arabia, a nominally Muslim nation and spectacular human rights abuser, insists that women cover their heads in public; in January, Coughlan and Hanafin were just the latest victims of this oppressive religious nonsense.

The implication in Conor Lenihan's statement is that Ireland has now adopted the humiliation of foreign nationals as best practice in the area of integration. Because our government meekly allows its female ministers to be treated as second class citizens on trips abroad, it is happy to dish out a dose of the same kind of poison to visitors who arrive in Ireland.

Rather than come up with a coherent integration policy of our own, based on respect for difference, we adapt and adopt the worst bits from abroad and implement them here.

It's not clear yet why the Sikh man who wants to join the Garda Reserve should have prompted such hostility. In 2005, as UCD sociologist Dr Steven Loyal pointed out last week, An Garda Siochana said it was committed to adapting its uniforms to suit recruits from non-Catholic backgrounds. At the time, both the force and the then minister for justice Michael McDowell were enthusing about the benefits of attracting recruits from ethnic and religious minorities. Speaking about the need to cater for those religious differences and find ways to adapt the uniform, Superintendent John Grogan said: "It is a problem that has been solved in every other police force and An Garda Siochana will be no different in that regard."

Sadly, Superintendent Grogan appears to have overestimated the capacity of the force to solve problems. What we are left with, therefore, because of the failure of government departments and state agencies to come up with such solutions, is an integration policy which sees multiculturalism as little more than having a Chinese restaurant and an Indian restaurant in the same town.

Governments should always be careful about changing their laws to accommodate religious demands, but that isn't what is being requested in the case of the Sikh reservist. There is no law against the wearing of turbans and neither are there any garda regulations specifically forbidding the wearing of such head gear. If there were, Superintendent Grogan would presumably have said so back in 2005. What there is is a set of generalised rules which even An Garda Siochana admitted last week could be changed at some point in the future. "To effectively achieve integration of many cultures into a single organisation will require a very fluid approach, " a garda statement said. "Policies and practices will be altered and adjusted where appropriate."

There is no legal or logical reason to ban the wearing of the turban.

And indeed, there may be one very good practical one, to add to any positive symbolism that might attach to seeing a garda officer, in the reserve or otherwise, don such headwear. The reason is this: Sikhs don't cut or trim their hair out of respect for what they believe is God's creation. (What God has put together, let no man tear asunder at the barber's. ) As well as its religious importance, the turban therefore has the practical benefit of keeping what would be spectacularly long hair from getting in the way of the performance of duties.

Even if you could get a Sikh to agree not to wear the turban, the mind boggles at the prospect of him chasing a hoodlum down the street, decades of uncut hair blowing in the wind and hampering his progress. Hot fuzz, indeed.

The effect of the garda decision in the case of the Sikh reservist is to ensure that no person of that religion can ever become a member of the force, which is surely not the aim of Noel Conroy, Conor Lenihan or the cabinet. Allowing the Sikh reservist to wear his turban should be a matter of simple common sense, one which carries no implication at all for our laws, our democracy or our way of life. To hold an alternative view, I would contend, is to believe in turban legends.