Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to talk about the fascists who were outside the gates yesterday. We need to talk about them and what they are doing. A party colleague of mine saw a Government Deputy leave the building yesterday and be followed by some of these people and subjected to the most horrendous personal abuse. There is a pattern to what is happening. There has been a tendency among all of us to ignore these people in the hope that such is the best way to deal with them. It absolutely is not. The yellow vest movement, in particular, is far right, anti-mask, anti-science, anti-vaccination, anti-immigrant and dangerous. It is incumbent on us all to unite on this issue. We can differ on lots of things but we must be in agreement that these people are a danger to democratic politics in this country.

Last weekend, I put a semi-humorous post on Facebook making clear how ludicrous the anti-mask movement is. It was a very successful post which has been shared some 300 times. What intrigued me was that within half an hour, I had received 132 very derogatory and nasty comments about it. I am used to that type of feedback from my time on the Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. I always thought that the Chairman of that committee, former Senator Catherine Noone, had the hardest time, with absolutely appalling abuse meted out to her. The response to my post tells me that these people are organised. Anybody who saw the baying mob yesterday will know that those involved have no place in democratic politics. The one lesson from history that we should all recognise is that one does not ignore fascists; one confronts them. We need to take these people on and make a stand for democratic politics. I want a debate on this issue. We can disagree on policy as much as we want to, but let us all unite against these bigots.