Fair City actress Donna Anita Nikolaisen says these hate crimes are very loose about racist abuse

Familiar to many for playing Zambian refugee and nurse Ama Chisenga in RTs Fair Trade Town for five years she was performing a play in her head. She barely noticed a white van speed past until she heard screams.

I was just minding my own business, dreaming like I do, she said. The guys shouted obscenities and racial slurs at me. They used the n-word. I had a shock. I still remember it today.

It’s like a wound. It’s like an invisible wound that you get. For a few seconds after you left, this happened and it’s a real attack on you. Anyway, if I came here from another country, it would be an attack that would happen to me, but it struck at the heart, because I am Irish.

Another time, someone passing her on the docks said something in a low voice. It felt like a throwback to where you came from.

And I remember looking up was that for me and then I realized it was, but the moment I could voice my thoughts, you’re in shock. It’s an attack in fact, on your person and on your soul and the moment you formulated your answer, it was gone, she said.

On another occasion, when she was coming home from work, she remembers being in a strong frame of mind.

And then this guy who ruined the day, passed by me on my way home to Dublin and he walks by and spouts horrible obscenities at me. It was going back to the jungle or something.

And whatever state of mind I was in, I was you know what, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I started chasing after him, and I said I was gonna report you to racism.ie.

He got such a shock that I responded so loudly and so hard, he kind of lost his balance on the bike and he wobbled and he almost fell. But he soon regained his composure and fled like the coward he was. A lot of these hate crimes are very cowardly, driven by people who aren’t happy in their own lives or for other reasons.

Then there are the unacknowledged forms of racism, she says, a coldness towards certain people.

While living in Stoneybatter she tried to clean graffiti from a phone booth that said n****rs out. When it didn’t come off, she changed it to abusers with a pen.

Still, she thinks most Irish people aren’t racist.

Born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a Trinidadian father, she was raised by her mother until she was two years old.

Her mother, a children’s nurse, fell seriously ill and made the difficult decision to give her up for adoption.

She spent nine months in a children’s home before being adopted by a couple in Bishopstown in Cork.

Her adoptive father Kurt came from Norway and her adoptive mother Anita from Singapore.

Her childhood was happy, safe and protected. It was only when she moved to Dublin that she had some unfortunate encounters.

Now acting, doing voiceover work and running a web design business in Kilkenny, she was drawn to a project by the Irish Trades Union Congress.

She was happy to deliver a hard-hitting message against racism and the far-right in a video released today.

I know we have a number of unresolved and pressing issues, she said.

Homelessness, which is tragic and unnecessary, and the housing crisis, which I personally understand.

Some people are at breaking point, she says, and that’s when really dangerous far-right ideologies can garner support.

I understand all too well the pressures people are under, but I don’t blame migrants for it, she says.

I am not an extremely political person myself, although I am interested in it. I blame successive governments for not having solved the problem.

We don’t want to be in this situation in Ireland without Irish people, without black people, without dogs, this situation that was in other countries in the past, because we are better than that.