Co-ordination of International Protection Services: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2023-02-16
============================================================

Stephen Donnelly (FF), Wicklow

Deputy Boyd Barrett talked about unity and solidarity. He said he does not want people to fall for the tricks of the far right and then he laid out tricks of the far left. He said we should not conflate real social problems that everyone in this House cares about with xenophobia and racism. He then spent his entire speech conflating those two things. I have sat beside the Taoiseach several times when he has responded to the Deputy's claims on this and he is right. In conflating real social challenges that everyone of us here cares about with attacks on places where children from Ukraine are living he is legitimising the hatred, the racism and the fury that he speaks about.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-02-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:35+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-02-16