Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)

Over the summer there was a series of attacks, apparently particularly directed against the Indian community. We had the case of an Indian man in Tallaght who was attacked, beaten and humiliated. He had clothing removed from him and there was the age-old racist trope of accusing somebody of colour of being violent. They were trying to accuse him of being a paedophile and there was absolutely no evidence of this, as the Garda said. We also had a six-year-old girl pushed off her bike. Her mother is an Indian nurse here. There are countless reports of similar incidents. Even the other day I had a report of an attack in a playground in Tyrellstown on somebody of colour and obviously I am going to look into that even more. The worrying trend is children and teenagers are involved in some of these attacks. That speaks to how they are imbibing racist ideas from older people, social media and the world around them.

It is not a new phenomenon. The Indian community I have spoken to would say it is completely underreported. In the last number of years people just have not bothered. The Minister must take note of what is said in every forum I have been in, which is that gardaí are very dismissive when these incidents are reported to them. They just want to whoosh them out of the station. There is no record, seemingly, kept in many cases and that was a widespread complaint. I am asking the Minister to meet representatives, to hear that and then to take it up with the Garda. There should be a record kept of racially motivated incidents.

I am running out of time but I want to say a couple of quick things. People who are in this country and working here are living in fear, including taxi drivers and nurses. Obviously this is strongly coming from the far right, but it is coming from within the system as well. “Stop the boats” came from the Tories. There are actions this Government has taken or failed to take, like allowing our housing crisis to not be dealt with for so long. Growing inequality just allows fertile ground for the far right.

I will mention some TDs in this House who were using the exact same language as the far right. I noticed "The myth of multiculturalism ... [and the] spiral of violence", "... a semi-utopian belief that Irish and European societies can ... integrate irreconcilable and overtly hostile value systems" and "One culture enshrines equality ... the rights of LGBTQ people [and the other does not]". This was said on the Independent Ireland website by Deputy O'Flynn.

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