Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)

Why are we having this debate? That is the first question I want to ask. A child was horrifically sexually assaulted. We are not discussing gender-based violence. I have just come from a committee that the rape crisis centre set up. Four TDs showed up. Nobody from Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael was there. They do not care about that issue. A racist riot followed the assault. Massive harm was done to gardaí. We have seen the attempted murder of families in Drogheda. Then we hear the Minister of State on the radio scapegoating the people who live in IPAS centres, saying that they should pay for their accommodation in which they are not even safe and which is being surrounded by people who sometimes want to harm or kill them. We hear his Minister friend's performative cruelty with the deportation flights that are costing the taxpayer a fortune. There is more performance in so many of the other things that he has done.

I want to talk about Simon Harris. Let us be clear, he had a disastrous presidential election. The housing crisis is increasing at pace. Fianna Fáil's own backbenchers are rare and savage over it. The Taoiseach has disappeared to a conference he does not even need to be at. Simon Harris does a pivot again to the right and starts to scapegoat minorities in this country, something he has done before. I am not a bit surprised. It is the modus operandi of establishment parties worldwide. In order to compete with the far right, they move further right. I was never very convinced by Simon Harris's liberal foray on repeal any way. I think he is in more comfortable territory right now.

We need to say a couple of things. The vast majority in international protection do not want to be in this country. Let us start with that. They do not want to leave their own countries, but there has been a massive increase in genocide, in wars, in militarism and in poverty. Many of the people are Ukrainian, and the Government was all for funding the war in Ukraine as well. We have a capitalist system, to which the Government is wedded, that is bringing nothing but devastation and poverty. What does the Government do? It resorts to increasing racism itself. Misogyny, homophobia and all of that is being resorted to by Trump and it looks like the Government is following suit. I saw photographs yesterday of Georgian people, apparently, being put onto flights. It is the kind of thing I have seen Trump do in the US with the ICE raids. It is absolutely despicable.

Simon Harris said that people are shutting down debate and are being divisive. He is being divisive. This has actual repercussions for lots of people in this country, including constituents of mine. It is a very diverse constituency. I did not hear the Government running for a debate on racism when the Indian community was under assault all over the summer. There was no debate in this House.

In the minute I have left, it has to be mentioned that it is not just Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Other parties in this House are leaning into racism as well. Aontú was exposed for its youth membership having a brutally antisemitic group chat where the n-word was used throughout. This is somebody who was working in a Deputy's office in these Houses and we are meant to pretend that they did not know he was a racist. He was an absolute fascist. Independent Ireland has been putting up stuff. It is disappointing that Sinn Féin is also there. If you do not point to the resources that exist in this society in a massively rich country with a huge budget surplus and huge number of vacant properties and all you do is attack the IPAS system, you are not actually tackling the far right. I am competing in the exact same territory. Take a lesson from the presidential election and Catherine Connolly. You do not have to lean into this stuff. Take a lesson from Zohran Mamdani as well. A lot of people do not want division and hatred stirred up.

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