Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy Farrell, for generously sharing his time. I thank the Minister for coming in for this debate. I was on my feet last week to address a Topical Issue debate. I spoke a lot about my concerns in this area. I will start with one thing I did not raise at that point, which is that there are a lot of very positive things happening. Where new people have come into communities, many of these communities have come together in very positive and supportive ways. New friendships, new organisations and new groups are coming together and have provided amazing support to some of those people who are new to our shores. Community organisers, mammies on the ground and the local community partnership project are doing very positive work in my area. It is really positive to see these amazing things happening.

This is important to see because it pushes back against those who want to sow hate and division. In that vein, I encourage people to go out and join the solidarity march on 2 March to push back against hate and division.

I am nervous about naming some of these positive and good projects because by naming them in this House and by their names getting out on social media, they become targets for organised networks that are operating. I repeat that I fundamentally disagree with the position of the Garda Commissioner who said there is no shadowy hand and there are no organised networks here. There are organised networks and if we are not on top of them, it is because of the way they are organised. There may be no legislative gap but there might be an investigatory, organisational or understanding gap. These networks are organising through social media and the Internet and through connections and in ways that were not available in the past to anti-democratic groups who wanted to disrupt our democracy. Ultimately, that is what is happening here. There are attacks on Deputies and their homes and constituency offices. Equally, the constant harassment of and attacks on the media are ultimately part of an anti-democratic project by many of these shadowy organisers. As part of this, we have seen attacks on trade union members, librarians and people running bookshops.

We need to look at how we are addressing this very real and serious challenge. While there may not be a legislative gap, there may be a different kind of gap, namely, a conceptual gap. There are groups operating and, as I said two minutes ago, I believe the Garda Commissioner is wrong when he dismisses the organised nature of the threats we are seeing. I will leave it there. I thank Deputy Farrell for sharing his time.

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