Pat Rabbitte called for a re-examination of national policies on immigration as part of his speech on Michael Davitt to the Parnell Summer School. He warned against seeing immigration in solely economic terms and called for addressing the challenges of integration and assimilation.
He invoked the spectre of Ireland’s legacy as an emigrant nation:

"We should also do well to not forget our own national experience as a one time emigrant people. We should as a now receiving country, remember and recall the three dimensions of involuntary, large-scale emigration as it affected our country – the wrench of leaving home, the demographic hole – and its consequences – left behind, and the difficulties our emigrants and receiving populations faced in the destination countries. We should have in our collective memory the lessons from that experience and apply them in our remarkable new demographic setting. I am sure that is what Davitt would want us to do."