Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2023-05-23
============================================================

Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

Does the Taoiseach agree with the Garda Commissioner's statement that the far right is not growing? How does that statement tally with the reality of what we have experienced, over the past couple of weeks in particular? A man in his 70s is in hospital after being assaulted at one of these blockades at Corrofin in Clare. We know of tents of asylum seekers being burned, with some of those involved in the protests alleging they had an agreement with the Garda to go in to clear them. The left, and People Before Profit in particular, is being targeted, with our meetings disrupted, our activists intimidated and us being threatened. There are blockades in different parts of the country. We have a situation where, as far I understand, members of an Garda were present when buses were boarded to count people going out and a reference was then made to some sort of right to protest. Is the Garda Commissioner dealing with the real world if he is just ignoring the reality of quite troubling things that are happening in our country?

---

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/2023-05-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:56+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-05-23