Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Let us return to what this topic is actually about. In a debate like this, when we discuss the road blockers, protesters and people who feel they get on buses to check passports, we are actually talking about domestic terrorism when we talk about people setting stuff on fire.

While it is open season for people from the Government and, indeed, from the Opposition to start talking about the immigration system, we need to get back to first principles. What we have seen over recent years is a spate of fires, arson attacks, and somebody is going to die. That is inevitable. If and when that happens, we are all going to stand up here and say how terrible it is but it is absolutely predictable. It is extremely important, therefore, for every representative from every political party in this House, and especially from the Minister's own, to call out the road blockers, the protestors, the bus-invaders and the arsonists as being absolutely wrong. When some local protestors or road blockers get succour from local councillors, we need to call out those councillors as wrong and their own political parties need to haul them in. It is not good enough to go to public meetings or public demonstrations and speak out of two sides of your mouth. We are dealing here with domestic terrorism and nothing, no loophole in the system, no question about how the system is organised, no rhetoric or community unease, justifies any of this. Nobody has the right to block a road. Nobody has the right to protest outside where somebody is living, to intimidate mothers and children getting off a bus and going into a place where they are going to live, or to set fire to somewhere.

As has been stated, we have had a litany of this stuff over recent years. This is Alabama 1955-type behaviour, when people used to set fire to black churches, and now it is happening in this country. The audacity of the Irish, the audacity of us. This is my real issue. In the light of all this stuff, with places being set on fire and everybody who is not white Irish being genuinely afraid to walk the streets because of things that might be said to them, and when there are protests all over the place and roads are being blocked, what is the rhetoric from the Government this month? The Taoiseach said there will be a “crackdown” on illegal immigration. The Minister for Justice, when interviewed this month, stated we will see “a lot more deportations”. Even today, the Minister of State, Deputy Browne, came to the House and spoke about clamping down. The audacity of the Government, representatives of which, in three weeks' time, are going to be over in the White House asking Joe Biden about documentation for the illegal Irish. They will be asking if we can sort out the undocumented Irish in the US and do a job for them while, at the same time, they use rhetoric such as clamping down-----

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