For many growing up in the early to mid-eighties in Ireland our first exposure to 'other', to people 'not like us', or not 'from here', came in the classroom. Every Lenten season the Trócaire boxes arrived, as they still do, in schools around the country. On each of them was often a striking picture of a young child, much the same age as we were, but in some way different. To our innocent and curious six year old selves we couldn't quite articulate what this difference was but we recognised it. The image of the Trócaire box popped into my head as I reflected on the recent survey from the European Commission showing that Ireland had the third highest level of openness to immigrants (80%) after Spain (83%) and Sweden (81%). The EU28 average is 58%.