Ideas of interculturality frequently make ontological claims about culture and ‘cultures'. Concomitantly, these discourses of interculturality also make claims about the nature of difference and how it should be managed or governed. This paper provides a genealogy of discourses for the governance of difference developed and implemented during a period of significant public focus on immigration in Ireland. Examining these governmental discourses as porous and transnationally shaped, it seeks to understand their rapid ascent and dissolution in state and non-governmental initiatives in the context of a period of supposed ‘boom and bust'. By examining the boundaries of what was and what was not considered subject to interculturalism, the paper proposes a series of ways of understanding racism in contemporary Ireland.