Michael D Higgins has warned that racism is "increasing rather than decreasing" in his St Patrick's Day speech.
In a ten-minute speech ahead of Friday's celebrations of St Patrick's Day, President Higgins said that we can all learn lessons from St Patrick's life, and that we have the power to create a diverse and diverse and inclusive world.
He said: "There are many powerful echoes from Patrick’s life that resonate with our contemporary circumstances, ones that have brought new forms of slavery into being, where racism is increasing rather than decreasing, in so many parts of a world, where a poisonous xenophobia, new and recalled, has taken hold in so many places.
