24 November 2023
All of us in ICCL are appalled at yesterday’s events and hope that the woman and children who were attacked on Parnell Square make a full recovery. We are thinking of them and their loved ones today.
At times like this, hate and fear are never the answer.
And yet yesterday, those emotions were manipulated by far-right actors to terrible effect. Much of what we saw yesterday has no place in our society and only serves to strike fear into the hearts of people from ethnic minority communities, migrant communities and all minoritised groups in Ireland. These people are us, our friends, our colleagues and our neighbours. And yet they frequently experience hate on our streets and online.
We stand in solidarity with them in the knowledge that they may feel an amplified sense of being unwelcome and targeted merely for who they are. It is on us to listen to their experiences and create a society where they feel free to live their lives.
In relation to the policing of yesterday’s events, we would like to first of all express our gratitude to all members of An Garda Síochána, Dublin Fire Brigade and other frontline services who bravely kept people safe yesterday. We note the Garda Commissioner’s statement this morning that there will be a “fundamental review” of public order policing.
A similar review was carried out in 2019 and it would be helpful to know how many of its recommendations have been implemented. The area of public order policing is complex and involves balancing rights and protecting public safety. It is essential that there is a full review of yesterday’s operation, involving the Policing Authority.
There is much we can and must do in response to these issues. As well as delivering an appropriate and proportionate criminal justice response to far-right and public order violence, we must also examine much more closely the nature of these groups who seek to undermine our democracy and society through messages of hate; we must challenge the amplification of extreme hateful material by online platforms; and we must recommit to introducing hate crime and incitement to hatred legislation and an action plan to tackle the root causes of hate as a priority.