Speech by Labour Leader Ivana Bacik TD – Black and Irish Professional Network of Ireland Conference

Deputy Ivana Bacik TD, Labour Party Leader, today delivered the keynote address at the 2026 Black and Irish x APNI (African Professional Network of Ireland) Conference: Shaping the Future, taking place today at TU Dublin Aungier Street, Dublin city centre.

It’s an honour to have been invited to give the keynote address at the Black and Irish and APNI conference today.

I am delighted to be here to speak about the Labour Party ‘Together We Thrive’ campaign.

We launched this campaign in March because we could see how necessary it was even then – and the need for it has certainly been clearly evident more recently through the two bye-elections we have just experienced.

So what is the Together We Thrive campaign?

It’s a Labour Party campaign promoting the urgent need for a fair, fact-based national conversation on migration.

We launched the campaign with personal stories from three individuals who have made an immensely positive contribution to Irish society; a business owner from Syria now living in Dublin; an educator from India now resident in Cork; and a young woman from Ukraine who has made Sligo her home.

And we held a powerful roundtable event at which we included representatives from Black and Irish, from the Institute of Antiracism and Black Studies, from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation; the Migrant Rights Centre and the Ukraine Civil Society Forum.

We used the message ‘Together We Thrive’ because it’s true.

First, the movement of people is a two-way street – Irish people from all backgrounds and skillsets gain invaluable experience abroad as emigrants, just as migrants bring fresh perspectives and new expertise to Ireland.

Our society, like any society, thrives on diversity. Cities, towns and villages across Ireland are greatly strengthened when they can attract new families, new households, new communities.

We can all see this for ourselves in every county – in every school, sports club and local hall we see our new communities making positive contributions.

The enormously positive contribution that those with migrant backgrounds make to our society and our economy is also clear from employment figures in a range of sectors.

Ireland needs workers from abroad to be able to provide the essential public services we need and to ensure that our economy can continue to grow and provide quality employment.

We know that the health and social care systems here in particular rely heavily on migrant workers.

Indeed, nearly one in four nurses and midwives employed by the HSE come from abroad.

I recently met with Nursing Homes Ireland who confirmed that nursing homes across the country simply could not function without carers from outside the EU who make up a huge proportion of their workforce.

Yet we are failing so many migrant workers.

This really came home when I met recently with members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation who have come to Ireland from Africa.

They told me about the enormous delays in the system for them, and for so many nurses working here who seek to bring spouses and children to join them from abroad.

I heard heartbreaking stories of family separation due to unjustifiable delays in processing family reunification visas.

A mother who works in cancer care in Rathgar in my own constituency, whose two daughters aged 4 and 7 are living back in Ghana with their grandmother.

And a young father working in a Dublin nursing home, who hasn’t seen his little five year old daughter in two and a half years.

We are failing the very people whose work is building our communities.

And we need to change our rhetoric and improve their reality.

Part of our campaign is therefore about practical changes – about ensuring a humane and compassionate approach within our system, particularly in respect of family reunification.

But we do also need to address the political rhetoric around migration.

We need to challenge lazy assumptions, calling out damaging comments that can have a deeply harmful effect – particularly when uttered by authoritative figures in political life.

In that context, the reported comments of former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern during the Dublin Central bye-election were disturbing.

Particularly alarming was the way in which he singled out specific ethnic, religious and national identities.

More than being just offensive and irresponsible, this language can be inflammatory.

To give him credit, this week Bertie Ahern attended the Eid celebrations in Croke Park – and I think that was commendable.

However, particularly in the context of an election, it was profoundly wrong to use language which was not respectful about migrants and minorities.

We had already seen another candidate in that same constituency make an outrageous call for internment of refugees.

And in the other bye-election in Galway West, a torrent of despicable online racist abuse was directed at our Labour candidate, Councillor Helen Ogbu.

We had to take robust steps to support and protect Helen from this abuse – indeed all our Labour platforms were affected by disgusting racist commentary.

Sadly, social media platforms like Meta consistently failed to take responsibility for preventing the hate speech facilitated on those platforms.

Just yesterday, a report has confirmed that ‘a persistent pattern of personal abuse and disinformation, sustained online harassment, racism, intimidation and slurs’ was directed against Helen in online discourse.

Of course, Helen’s fantastic result in the election, as she topped the poll in Galway City and was the Leading Left candidate with nearly 13,000 votes – proved that there was immense warmth for her on the doors and across the community.

We certainly felt that warmth, that support and appreciation for Helen and her work, while out canvassing.

I have no doubt that Helen will be the next Left TD for Galway West, and in the meantime she will make a wonderful Mayor for Galway – and the first Black Mayor in the city’s history.

But the toxic abuse online was mirrored in the hideous sloganeering of some Far Right parties in bye-elections, with blatant reference to replacement theory and other disgusting tropes.

Unfortunately, even the language of mainstream political leaders can feed into a generalised hostility towards migrants.

We saw that again this week, when the Taoiseach spoke in the Dail in words which suggested that the housing crisis could be conflated with inward migration.

This is especially ironic, when we all know that significant numbers of migrant workers will be required to come here to support our construction industry, in order to build the homes and public infrastructure that we so badly need.

So at this time it is really important that we challenge negative commentary around migration, and that we present the facts and the positive reality instead.

It’s particularly important that we do this, as a nation with such a long history of emigration.

Our Together We Thrive campaign seeks to promote responsible discourse around migration – rooted in facts, humanity and respect.

But it’s not enough for the Labour Party to organise a campaign like this from Opposition.

We need the Government to step up, and to launch a national information campaign on the positive benefits of migration for Ireland.

Just as we saw strong and responsible public service information campaigns run by the Government during Covid, so too should we now seek a similar campaign to tackle hate speech and fake news around migration.

Speaking myself as an Irish citizen whose grandfather brought his young family here as refugees from Czechoslovakia in the 1940s, I know how vital it is to challenge the Far Right narrative.

It’s vital to remind everyone of the enormous positive contribution that our new communities are making for Ireland.

Thank you for the work that you are all doing through Black and Irish and APNI to emphasise that positive contribution.

I and my Labour colleagues greatly appreciate and value this work – and we look forward to working collaboratively with you into the future!