Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like every other Member here I was absolutely shocked by the savage attack on a young child, her protectors and her carers in a very public place. I was horrified by it. It matters little to me whether the person who perpetrated the crime was Irish, non-Irish, English or whatever. That is not the important thing. The important point is that this crime happened and it has to be condemned by each and every person here.

I have heard a lot of arguments about what happened subsequently. I will confine my remarks in a broader way to my view of where we are at in what is legitimate and acceptable protest on our streets and what is not. I have the greatest of admiration for Senator Lynn Ruane, and I always have and will have, but I cannot buy into her argument here this evening that we must look at the backgrounds of the individuals, that we must sympathise with them, and that this is the core thing we should concentrate on. I believe that all sections of community need to be helped but the focus is not on them now. I know about poverty. I have been around quite a while and I know many huge families with 14 and more who were brought up in tough times with hardly enough to eat, and with poor housing and poor sanitary conditions. Many of those people went on and did very well for themselves and most have never felt the need to take up a stick or a hatchet to attack anybody. There is a responsibility on all of us. I also know a little bit about addiction. I am an alcoholic myself and I have associated with people in addiction and worked with them. I understand the huge pressures they are under as well but, again, addiction is no excuse for behaviour like we witnessed in our streets. I want to preface my remarks by saying that.

The great writer Samuel Johnson once said humorously that "the Irish are a fair people - they never speak well of one another." I believe we are a very fair-minded people and a very tolerant people. We are the kind who say "You go your way, I go my way and if you do not interfere with me or hurt me then you are entitled to do what you want". That is a very fair way of approaching life. Our tolerance is characteristic of us as Irish people. We do not have any problem with people protesting on our streets. In many cases these protests can be quite useful and a useful addendum to public debate. People on both ends of the spectrum, extreme right and extreme left, can parade and flag wave to their hearts' content and we let them. There is, however, one condition attached to that, which is that these people must show respect for the rights of the public and that they must fully co-operate with our gardaí, who have the unenviable job of trying to police huge numbers of people in protest, peaceful or otherwise, in our public spaces.

The right to protest is not universally accepted. Try to protest in China, Russia or Cuba and see what will happen. Try to protest in most of the Middle East authorities, which have huge support on the streets in our cities at present in respect of the conflict of Hamas. Try to protest there. Try to stand up and wave an LGBT flag there and see what will happen to you. I say that as a strong supporter of LGBT but I find it highly ironic when I see their banners waving in support of Hamas.

There was a very important and huge breach of what most people would see as an acceptable level of protest some years ago in this city in Jobstown when the then Tánaiste, Joan Burton, and her female assistant were terrorised and locked into their vehicle for almost three hours. Anyone who suffers in the slightest from claustrophobia will know the horror of that. No-one answered for it. Yes people went to court and they walked free, there are no complaints about that but then people went around smiling when they were criticised afterwards and said "They were found innocent". That is a very low bar for a public representative to have as to what is acceptable in protest or not, to say they were found innocent. Public representatives and TDs have a responsibility here. It is a privilege to be here and when they are out on the streets, the very least they can do is act responsibly.

As well as that, some of the people who were most vociferous in support of what happened to Joan Burton are very vociferous now against the crowd who are misbehaving and blackguarding because they are from the extreme right. I do not care about the extreme right or the extreme left: they are all equal to me. I believe that most of them have their own long-term policy of subverting our State, but that is a whole new argument and we will not go there now.

I have confidence in the Minister and I have confidence in the Garda Commissioner.