I was chatting to in a taxi driver in Berlin a few weeks ago. We were speaking about Euro 2016 and I asked him about Germany’s hopes in the semi-final the following night. He told me that he didn’t care, that he was Turkish. He was born and bred in Germany but he was Turkish. His parents were Turkish and his friends are Turkish, and they all follow Turkey. He lives in Germany and works in Germany but didn’t hide his disdain for all things German.

I am sure there are many London taxi drivers with cockney accents who consider themselves Irish, sing Irish songs and follow Irish teams courtesy of one or both of their parents having crossed the Irish sea. But this was different. My Berliner driver showed a complete indifference to the country that was his home. And therein lies a big problem across Europe: a lack of integration which is breeding the sort of hate in Parisian and Brussels suburbs and has created some of the nutcases masquerading as fighters under the abomination that is Isis.

Earlier this year, I drove through the now infamous Molenbeek neighbourhood in Brussels. Dilapidated, there were no western faces but exclusively middle eastern and north African looking men, mostly in Arabic dress, sitting on kerbs and standing on street corners kicking their heels. It was a far cry from the cosmopolitan makeup of Brussels, the very Athena of integration.

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In London and Paris too, there are examples of areas totally populated by immigrant communities with little sign of the culture of the country they inhabit. Is it that these communities blatantly don’t want to be part of their host country or is it that they feel unwelcome as outsiders? Either way, it’s unhealthy to the point that it has bred and is breeding a hatred of western culture and western men, women and children.

As of yet, it is not a complex which has developed in Ireland, unless of course you count the marginalisation of the Travelling community for whatever reason. But when it comes to integrating the so called “new Irish”, foreign nationals have mixed well in communities and parishes across the country. Players with non-EU names are appearing on GAA team sheets and virtually no urban school is without a child of eastern European origin. Apart from the controversial direct provision system where asylum seekers are kept in compounds, immigrants to Ireland have not been ghettoised, which in turn has dampened down the sense of fear of jihadisim and radicalisation so prevalent in other European countries.

There will be opponents but it is a strong argument that integration is a key to quelling hate, disaffection and radicalisation, particularly among impressionable young men of Islamic extraction. We only have to analyse recent events in Nice, Paris and Brussels to understand how radicalisation is the enemy of integration. CL

Phone-y existence

I saw something as rare as the corncrake the other day while driving past a bus stop. It was a teenage girl standing there with her arms folded waiting on the bus. What is so rare about that? Well, she wasn’t on her smartphone and that is why it was so remarkable and lovely.

I can’t talk. I am forever on my phone. But it really is a rare occurrence nowadays to spot anyone under 40 idling without gawking into a phone, at a bus stop, on a bus, in a café or even walking down the street. Go out and see for yourself. In Ireland above most other places, the phone is the fifth limb.