'The New Irish' is the current term for recent immigrants into Ireland (replacing the confusing and possibly offensive 'Non-Irish Nationals'). It generally does not cover longstanding native minorities like Irish Travellers or the small but distinctive Irish Jewish community.
Up until very recently Ireland was primarily a nation of emigration, a country you left rather than came to (an exception being made for the sizable Ulster Scot population in the North). This led to a certain homogeny: the Irish population was almost entirely white and almost entirely Christian, and the Christians were almost entirely Catholic. Ethnic minorities were mostly students or involved in the restaurant trade and rarely showed up on Irish TV or in Irish films.
This has begun to change since The '90s. Increased prosperity brought a new wave of immigrants that have begun settling into the country. Irish media is (slowly) recognising this change and has begun featuring New Irish characters.
These should not be confused with the Irish as a specific ethnic group.
'The New Irish' are Irish in the sense of being citizens of Ireland, while ethnic Irish are a native people with a common ancestry and culture, but are not necessarily Irish citizens. Many of them live in the USA or Australia, for example.
Examples:
- The Girl from Once is a Czech immigrant.
- The protagonist of The Front Line is a Congolese immigrant, who works as a security guard at a bank and is forced to participate in a Tiger raid.
- Gabriella from The Guard is a Croatian immigrant who married Aidan in a marriage of convenience.
- High and Tight is set 20 Minutes into the Future and features a mix of nationalities. The Olsen family are Americans who had an Irish mother, Ryan is English and Becky is Venezuelan.
- Implied in Aaron. The protagonist Adam is Ambiguously Brown and the photograph of his girlfriend back in Ireland shows that she's a girl of colour.
- My Name Is Emily downplays it by featuring Arden as an English student in a Dublin school. His father is Irish and his mother is English.
- 7 Days (2021) has Rosie, played by Dana Lee Al Qattan, who is German-Kuwaiti and implied to have been attending high school in Ireland.
- Sing Street features Ngig who is an African immigrant. His status as a Token Minority is Played for Laughs, as Darren actually says they should get a black boy in the band.
Literature
- Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating: The protagonists Hani and Ishu are both descended from immigrants to Ireland. Their families are from India and Bangladesh, while both share the Bengali ethnicity. Bengali culture and the community established in Ireland gets a fair amount of focus.
- Siobhan Parkinson's Sisters... No Way! has a protagonist whose deceased mother was an American immigrant.
- Derry Girls:
- Episode 2.05 features two second-generation Asian students. One is subject of a Mistaken Nationality Bait-and-Switch joke about her status as a New Transfer Student.
Sister Michael: Miss Cheung's family have recently moved here to Derry so I hope you'll all make her feel very welcome. It's bound to be a bit of a culture shock, Mae. Things are done... differently in this part of the world. But I'm sure you'll soon feel as at home here as you did back in your beloved Donegal.
- Main character James is ethnically Irish, being born to a Derry woman that moved to England and was raised there most of his life, and therefore has an English accent.
- Episode 2.05 features two second-generation Asian students. One is subject of a Mistaken Nationality Bait-and-Switch joke about her status as a New Transfer Student.
- Fair City has featured Russian, Brazilian and Nigerian characters.
- Raw actually has a majority of the cast consisting of immigrants, which is not implausible considering it is set in a restaurant. There's Tanya and Bobby who are English, Tiny is Nigerian, Pavel is Czech and Geoff is Australian. Later seasons feature more English immigrants.
- Fate: The Winx Saga, which is filmed in Ireland and features a few Irish-accented students at Alfea, notably has Kat; played by Leah Minto, who's of mixed Irish and Nigerian ancestry and uses her natural Dublin accent.
- Father Ted:
- In a strangely prophetic joke, a 1998 episode involved a large Chinatown existing on Craggy Island. As it happened Chinese immigrants have since become the largest visibly foreign minority and there has been serious talk of establishing an official Chinatown in Dublin. Most are students who never left after visas ran out: the census gave 11,000 Chinese but the figure could be nine times this.
- A subversion in the final episode of the first series. A nun tells a black priest how wonderful she thinks the work being done in Africa is. The priest replies, "Sure I wouldn't know, I'm from Donegal" in a thick Donegal accent - and he's played by Kevin Sharkey, who is indeed from Donegal.
- The English Class is a sitcom about immigrants learning English under a particularly dreadful David Brent like Irish teacher.
- Love/Hate has Nidge hire an Eastern European Giant Mook as his bodyguard for a time until said Giant Mook nearly loses a leg to a machete attack. A number of prostitutes in the series come from a variety of countries as well, including one who overdoses along with Debbie. There's also Gav, a black Garda who is affectionately nicknamed "Obama" by one of his colleagues. The first two seasons also have Rosie, played by Irish-Ethiopian Ruth Negga.
- Red Rock has Adrijan Kosos, a garda who hails from Croatia and retains his accent.
- The Young Offenders features Linda Walsh, who is of African descent and is implied to be adopted, since the rest of her family is white.
- The one off tv drama Doing Money focuses on a Romanian woman who was kidnapped and forced into prostitution when she's kidnapped off the streets of London and brought to Ireland.
- Faithless is a Black Comedy dramedy that centres around an Irish-Egyptian Muslim man struggling to deal with the death of his Catholic wife and bring up his three daughters. His own faith is similar to most modern Irish catholics in that he's more secular and two of his daughters are leaning towards either of their parents' faiths with the middle child choosing to wear a hijab out of guilt for her mother's death, while the youngest wishes to make her holy communion.
- Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, of Irish and Afro-South American parentage, is regarded as the first "New Irish" artist to break through to the mainstream.
- Samantha Mumba was a successful singer in the early 2000s. Though Irish, her father is Zambian, and as such she is mixed-race. Though she only recorded one album, she had moderately more success in the US than her contemporaries, and later moved there.
- The Stolen City music video for "Faces" features Thomas Sharkey (French) and Bobby Calloway (British) in the gang of bullies.
Web Video
- The Gumdrops has Sadia - who is Venezuelan - living in the house as well. As she's a student, it's possible she's in Ireland for college.
