Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I made the point in an earlier debate that the world watched with horror the brutal police murder of George Floyd and that many, myself included, watched with admiration the multiracial uprising of young people in the US against its President, police forces and an entire system that is riddled with inequality and racism. In this debate, I wish to make some further points and bring that discussion back to Ireland. President Trump has repeated the phrase once used by a racist police chief, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts", giving a green light to white supremacists to bring their guns into the equation. However, the real looters are the American billionaires who have increased their wealth by an incredible $485 billion in the past ten weeks while Covid-19 swept the country and put 43 million out of work. I hope and am confident that the new generation building the movement that we see in the US will reach back to and rediscover the best traditions of the black freedom movement of the 1960s, the traditions of the likes of Martin Luther King, who said, "[W]e are saying that something is wrong ... with capitalism ... There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism", and the traditions of people like Malcolm X, who drew the conclusion that one could not have capitalism without racism. It is not just the four police officers, it is the entire system that is guilty. Clearly, it is time for change.

Of course, racism is not an American phenomenon. A young woman who participated in the Black Lives Matter movement in Dublin last Saturday, Judy Ehiguese – I hope I am pronouncing her name correctly – told the media: "It’s not spoken about here because it’s not as serious as what you see in America where people are shot or killed." Quite poetically, she stated: "It hides in the bushes and the trees here; it's silent." Another participant in the demonstration, Lawson Mpame – again, I hope I am doing justice to the man's name – said:

Many Irish people still refuse to accept racism is a problem in this country.

They think we're just making it up but I've experienced it at first hand, my family has experienced it and my friends too.

[...] Being black in Ireland should mean being part of the Irish community but sometimes we feel like we’re not actually part of this community. It feels like we’re second-class citizens and we don’t have the same rights as you guys. That has to change and that needs to start now.

I will just make a brief point on this. I believe that protests in the current period have to be organised with stewarding, social distancing, masks and other safety measures, but I am opposed to the decision of the Garda to launch a criminal investigation into the organisers of last weekend's demonstration. One of the reasons for doing this so publicly was to create a chill factor for the organisers of other demonstrations being planned over the next few days. Some of those organisers are young black people.

It amounts to a criminalisation of protest and the investigation should be dropped.

The words of those young people can be backed up by facts. It is a fact that the incidents of racism recorded in this State for quarter 1 this year were double the number for quarter 1 last year. It is a fact that a UN committee reviewing racism in Irish society found an increasing incidence of racist hate speech against Travellers, Roma, refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. It is a fact that the UN is calling for proper human rights and equality training for State officials and that it made special mention of the need for such training for Ireland's policing and law enforcement officials. I do not have time to talk about the scandal of direct provision, nor how the housing and jobs crises are fanning the flames of racism by forcing people to compete for scarce resources. Clearly, these are issues in this country and they must be tackled.

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