Ms Niamh McDonald:

Briefly, I want to provide a little bit of the experience of what the FRO does on the ground. We train community workers, family resource centre workers and communities across the country in how to respond to far-right activity in a de-escalation process. What we find from all communities is that preparation is key. Instead of scrambling and suddenly saying "oh my goodness what is outside my door or community centre", we have those trusted networks and trusted leadership already prepared and ready to go. Some of what Ms Crickley and Community Work Ireland is saying is part of the work we do together.

First, I want to compliment a number of people. I compliment our colleagues in Donegal for the inspirational work they have done. I also compliment the many Tidy Towns committees across the country. In the work I do, I come into communities to give supports and the Tidy Towns has emerged as one of the most proactive anti-far-right, progressive organisations. It welcomes people seeking asylum in to clean up and tidy our communities and to make them the best. I put that on record. We need to have a flexibility in our approach to funding. We need to trust our community workers that they understand what to do. The far right will present itself in different ways to different communities. It will present itself in one way to the refugee community, in another way to the LGBTQ community, to the trans community, and in its approach to sex education, but it all causes disruption and harm. At the FRO, we want to support community workers to understand and do that. The solidarity inoculates against the hate. This hate is a disease and the solidarity in our communities will inoculate against that and will rehumanise people. What East Wall Here For all, Ballymun For All, Le Chéile and other groups are doing, that is, all these expressions of solidarity, inoculates against the hate. The community responses have to come from within our community and from trusted sources. Due to the mass of disinformation that we spoke about, there is no trust in mainstream media but there is a trust in people's community worker, childcare worker and people you meet at the gates of the school and at work. That is where the trusted conversations are had.

There a huge lack of leadership from the Government. It is what I hear every day. There is a real mismanagement in how things are spoken about and how people seeking refuge are spoken about, which is playing into the arms of the far right and escalating the situation. The Government and all political leaders and representatives need to be promoting the same message. That is the only way we will be able to combat that. When anybody from any of the parties comes out and fuels this hate, it goes everywhere. It does not matter from which party the person is from. As I said, solidarity is probably one of the most important pieces to inoculate against the hate across the country right now.