An Garda Síochána
Dail Éireann — 2023-11-28
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Mick Barry (PBP), Cork North-Central

Referring to the riots, the Garda Commissioner said, "But we could not have anticipated that in response to a terrible crime, the stabbing of schoolchildren and their teacher, that this would be the response". For a casual observer of Ireland's far right that would be a naive statement. For a Garda Commissioner it is absolutely astounding. Ireland's racist and fascist extremists, and their organisations, have been watching and waiting for months for a tragedy they could exploit in order to do something like they did last Thursday night. I tell you this, Taoiseach, migrants would not underestimate the far right and what it is capable of. The LGBTQ+ community would not underestimate the far right and what it is capable of. Many workers, including library workers, would not underestimate the far right either. I do not believe that repression or a heavy line on law and order will solve this problem. However, I have no problem saying that if the Garda Commissioner believes half of what he said, then he is seriously out of touch.

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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/2023-11-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:27+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-11-28