Mr. Mark Malone:

On Deputy Costello’s question on international links, there have always been links both at a European level and an English-language level; I am thinking of the US and England, particularly, and Britain more broadly. What are the organisations we consider far right? It was useful of the Deputy to speak to that lens, which is more about proto-fascism. Political democracies such as the Hungary of Orbán would describe themselves as illiberal democracies. To the right of that is where much of the far right in Ireland is politically positioned. There is conversation about the far right being nebulous or vague but we tend to be quite specific in talking about institutions, organisations, individuals and networks geared towards proto-fascism, who have no interest in generalised democracy and will use wedge issues and the electoral process to sustain and build political power. In Ireland, the Irish Freedom Party speaks openly through white supremacist tropes of the great replacement. A small group, the National Party, tweets and shares quotes from Mein Kampf, which tells you exactly what that group is about. There is a not very numerous range of far-right influencers who have direct working relationships with neo-Nazi organisations in the UK, like Patriotic Alternative, and US fascist publishing houses. There are systemic links. Part of that is the nature of far-right activity generally, given the interconnectedness, sets of shared ideas and the search for commonality because they are small. That is just to give some context. Those links definitely do exist.