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

The crackdown on asylum seekers announced at the EU summit last week was based solely on the narrative of the far right. These are not my words or the words of any radical socialist; instead, they are the words of a colleague of the Taoiseach, Fianna Fáil MEP, Barry Andrews, and he is right. When I made the point in this House last week that the Government's failures on housing were a gift to the far right, the Taoiseach urged me to consider my language. The next day he flew to Brussels and said that the EU needed to be "fair, firm and hard" on the asylum issue. He gave himself a get-out-of-jail card by saying the EU needed to be hard on the traffickers, but that was the small print. It was not the headline and a man of the Taoiseach's experience would know, or have a pretty good idea at the very least, what the headline was going to be. Given that he is careful with his language, will the Taoiseach admit to the House that this was a dog-whistle?

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