Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will pick up on where Ms Hanlon finished about far-right groups setting themselves up as the legitimate anti-establishment. That is quite scary because while integration and refugee issues are on the agenda, I always try to highlight that, for many of the organisers and ringleaders at the top of these kinds of movements, there is ultimately an anti-democratic issue. Behind immigration comes a broader racism, behind that comes homophobia and behind that a general misogyny. The kinds of issues we are talking about, such as hate crimes, attacks on women and women being unsafe will only escalate. Deputies have been attacked on the street and their homes and cars have been attacked. There is a rejection of democracy overall. We can have an argument about whether democracy has served us well and whether governments have served us or our communities well. However, when people ultimately want to tear this all down, that is quite scary. They are essentially looking to tear apart the fabric of society.

I am due to attend the Select Committee on Justice so I apologise. We are often due to be in three places at once. Deputy McAuliffe is keeping an eye on the television because he is due to go to the Chamber, as is Deputy Murnane O'Connor. It is the nature of this place.

The Select Committee on Justice is discussing hate crime legislation shortly. It an important tool we need to stop those who want to pull apart the fabric of society. At the same time, we need to be weaving that fabric together more quickly and that is where the local response and local groups come in. When I arrived there was a lot of talk about reaching out to community groups such as the Tidy Towns, and their strength. Big national organisations such as the GAA and the FAI that are in every parish have a huge responsibility. That is not to avoid the responsibility of politicians but to say that a wider responsibility exists. One thing that also concerns me is that I see a general attack on civil society, a building narrative of State-run propaganda, of State money being used to sell lies and divide people, which is ultimately an attack on civil society because it is ultimately about the anti-democratic, anti-liberal agenda at the end of the day. I agree that funding needs to be fixed. It must be flexible and not wrapped up in red tape. It must be put in the hands of communities and we must trust communities to spend it effectively in ways that are not one-size-fits-all.

I said that directly to the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, and I believe they understand it. The Minister of State tried to do that in his Department previously.

I will ask questions rather than make a speech. One of the things I am conscious of is the far right has lots of European and global networks that are learning from each other. Are we doing the same thing? Are there European links, whether these are community groups or groups like the Far Right Observatory? Is there that information sharing? I am conscious of the time so I am happy to take a written answer or a very brief answer on that. We can get into the detail of it another time.

I am also conscious this has not just been an issue over the past few weeks or months. We may have had a break during the Covid pandemic when everything shut down but before Covid there was a wave of very deliberate organisation. It was a similar model to what we see now, with this astroturfing and creating fake grassroots campaigns, with misinformation and lies around the opening of direct provision centres. We did not do enough then. Some people were screaming into the void and warning us, but we did not do enough. If the far right and those who are ultimately opposed to and trying to destroy society are developing, learning and advancing, what are we missing now? We have spoken a lot about the algorithm, community development and all those kinds of pieces but the Government, ideally, and especially community - as Ms Ní Chonchubhair said, it should be about preparation - should be a step ahead of the far right. What is it we are missing now that we probably should have been aware of last week?