GREEN PARTY LEADER and Transport Minister Eamon Ryan has condemned the appearance of masked people and anti-immigrant banners outside Integration Minister Roderick O’Gorman’s house.
While speaking to RTÉ Radio this afternoon, Ryan said that the scenes were “deeply troubling” but that these incidents are “not new” and that he has experienced similar, though less serious, abuse in the past.
“We’ve had people outside our house and listen, you do not want to wake up in the morning or look out your window and see, with your children there, that there’s people at your front door at your front gate,” he said, while agreeing with O’Gorman that gardaí had acted appropriately in dealing with the situation on Thursday night.
However, he described the incident outside O’Gorman’s house as “a serious escalation” and that the “horrific” banners and the men wearing masks and balaclavas represented a “sinister, deeply troubling and worrying development”.
Some of the banners made reference to the white nationalist ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory.
As Ryan said, there have been incidents where protestors have set up outside the homes of politicians or accosted them on the street. A common theme of anti-immigrant sentiment is apparent in these cases.
He also pointed to the online abuse that politicians receive and said perhaps the public was aware of how common it is.
“There’s been a pattern, it’s going back a number of years now of absolute organised, systemic, abusive attacks on politicians, particularly online but also people congregating outside their houses,” he said.
Also this week, on Monday, Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson was approached by a man and filmed while waiting at a bus stop in Dublin.
The man hurled abuse at Ó Broin and accused him of “bringing all these illegal migrants into the country, ruining the place”.
Debates about how firm gardaí should be in dealing with these kinds of incidents have intensified in the wake of the events outside O’Gorman’s house, with some people arguing the “hands off” approach has been ineffective.
Ryan told RTÉ today that there is a risk of giving the agitators exactly what they want, which are videos of gardaí using force against them that can be posted on social media.
He said these people represent a small minority and that their views are not shared by the vast majority of the public. They also “wrap themselves around the Irish flag” but do “nothing but a disservice to it”.
He advised people to avoid voting for any candidate in local elections who support “that kind of divisive politics”.
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