Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the Social Democrats, I express our sincere sympathies to the Amess family on what is a huge personal tragedy for them. The murder of David Amess is also an attack on democracy just as the murder of Jo Cox was. There is no doubt that we live in a much more divided and unequal world and that there has been a coarsening of political discourse, which has made politics all the more toxic. A line has been crossed here. We cannot go looking for excuses because there are no excuses for what happened to David Amess. I believe we will all be united in our condemnation of his murder. We all know just how essential it is for us to have interaction with our constituents, whether it is in the UK or here, and that should always continue to be the case.

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