New research has claimed that Black non-Irish people are five-times more likely to experience discrimination when seeking employment when compared to White Irish people.
The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) says Black non-Irish people are over two and a half times more likely to experience discrimination when in employment compared to White Irish people.
The new study, 'Ethnicity and Nationality in the Irish Labour Market', looks at Central Statistics Office (CSO) data from the Quarterly National Household Survey Equality Modules from 2004, 2010 and 2014.
The research examines the experience of immigrants and minority ethnic groups in the Irish labour market across four measures: employment rates, occupation, discrimination when seeking work and in the workplace.
Some of the key findings include that people from the Black non-Irish group are less than half (0.4 times) as likely to be employed than White Irish - and five times as likely to experience discrimination when seeking work.
People from the Black Irish group are twice as likely to experience discrimination seeking work and just under three and a half times (3.4 times) as likely to experience discrimination in the workplace as White Irish.
While both the Black Non-Irish and Black Irish groups are much less likely to hold a managerial or professional job.
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White EU-East nationals are much less likely to hold a managerial or professional job, but show no difference in their rates of employment.
And Asian Irish people do not differ in terms of employment rates and are more likely to be working in professional/managerial occupations.
However they are almost twice as likely to experience workplace discrimination.
Overall, the ESRI says it seems that the disadvantage experienced by some groups in relation to securing employment in top jobs appears to be narrowing over the period since 2004.
Emily Logan is chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission.
She says: "Access to and use of good quality data and empirical research are of crucial importance in identifying the barriers to the full enjoyment of human rights and equality that persist in our society, as well as the people whom these barriers most affect.
"With a continuously improving jobs market and increases in immigration flows to Ireland, it is important to ensure that people resident in Ireland are afforded equal employment opportunities and integrated into the labour market.
"The much higher rates of labour market discrimination experienced by some ethnic groups highlights the need for employers to proactively work to ensure diversity in the workplace and to avoid incidences of discrimination in recruitment."
Lead author of the report is Frances McGinnity of the ESRI: "Different ethnic groups have different outcomes in the Irish labour market, even if they are Irish citizens.
"This suggests that we need to consider ethnicity more explicitly when designing policies to overcome differences in labour market outcomes across different groups".
