Seán Kyne (Fine Gael)
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I move:

That Seanad Éireann:

abhors and condemns: - the attack on children and adults outside Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire;

- any action that makes children, parents or teachers feel unsafe in a school environment;

- violence of any kind against children; notes with approval: - increased powers for members of An Garda Síochána in relation to body-worn cameras and other matters;

- recent increases in the penalties for assaulting a member of the emergency services;

- the allocation of an additional €10 million for An Garda Síochána in Dublin; praises and acknowledges: - the intervention of bystanders to preserve life and protect others;

- the bravery of ordinary members of the public in a frightening situation;

- the swift reaction from emergency services, Dublin Fire Brigade, An Garda Síochána, and medical staff from the Rotunda Hospital;

- that emergency services routinely put themselves in danger to protect us all; rejects and denounces, and is disgusted by: - any attack on member of An Garda Síochána or the emergency services;

- those who caused fear and apprehension, or were involved in causing damage or vandalism, in Dublin city centre;

- the mindless violence witnessed in Dublin city centre last week;

- any form of domestic terrorism;

- threats against politicians and other public figures;

- the narrative of ethno-nationalists or extremists who target innocent people in Ireland on the basis of their ethnicity; expresses its solidarity with those who were injured or affected by the violence in Dublin city centre;

calls on: - the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána to make every effort to ensure that the perpetrators of the violence are brought to justice; and

- the Minister for Justice to continue to make all necessary resources available to An Garda Síochána and to bring forward such other legislative measures as she may feel are required.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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I second the motion.

Seán Kyne (Fine Gael)
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The Minister is welcome. I unreservedly condemn the attack on innocent people that took place on the streets of Dublin last Thursday. The attack on children outside Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire and their carer was absolutely abominable and atrocious. It was unbelievable that any individual, whoever they are, could attack innocent children in this country, in our capital city. I acknowledge the pain and suffering of the families and give best wishes to all on the road to recovery who were the subject of the attack. I acknowledge the work and the intervention of bystanders on that day. Without them, the atrocity could have been far worse. I acknowledge the endeavours of those who assisted, intervened and held the perpetrator down while gardaí arrived.I want to acknowledge all those who intervened.

I acknowledge the front-line responders, particularly members of An Garda Síochána, who attended and were the first line of defence in Dublin on that day. The role of An Garda Síochána and its members is a difficult one. It is difficult any day of the week but the scenes we witnessed in Dublin last week, and the orchestrated campaign against gardaí, property, businesses and ordinary individuals that we saw on our social media, televisions and videos, are to be unreservedly condemned. Each and every individual member of An Garda Síochána who was there, who responded and who put his or her life in danger and suffered at the hands of the crowds and rioters is to be praised and commended for their work, as are all members of the emergency services who responded and who themselves came under attack. Their vehicles were under attack. The scenes we witnessed in Dublin last week were unbelievable.

I acknowledge the ordinary people, including the bus and Luas drivers, who saw their vehicles being attacked and burned. What we witnessed was blatant criminality on our streets. The bravery of all those involved in dealing with these issues has to be acknowledged. I also acknowledge the swift response of the medical staff who assisted those on the front line, the innocent children and their carer who were attacked and all those who were injured during the week, including members of An Garda Síochána.

I welcome the investment the Minister announced for Dublin recently, namely, an additional allocation of €10 million for An Garda Síochána in Dublin, and the recent increases in penalties for attacks and assaults on a member of An Garda Síochána or the emergency services. I acknowledge the legislation the Minister has been pushing through with regard to body-worn cameras. This will be hugely important for future events, although we hope there will be none as bad as this recent one. For future events, the body-worn cameras will be of huge assistance to members of An Garda Síochána in catching criminals and rioters who act in this fashion.

I also acknowledge the commitment with regard to facial recognition technologies. We have to use every piece of modern technology to ensure we can identify people who are involved in criminality, rioting or public disorder, particularly the serious type conducted against members of An Garda Síochána, whose primary job is to protect the peace and every individual in and citizen of our State.

I want to speak about those individuals who were involved. I do not in any way want to denigrate the residents of the immediate vicinity because, as I understand from reports, people travelled from outside Dublin 1, Dublin 2 and wherever else. They travelled from outside the immediate vicinity to be involved in the rioting and the behaviour we witnessed on our streets. This was an orchestrated campaign by the people involved, the unsavoury individuals who congregated for the sole purpose of creating havoc and mayhem and attacking members of An Garda Síochána, businesses, property and decent, ordinary people going about their day and their business in Dublin city. It was mindless violence that we witnessed. The gardaí did the best they could do. We have to ensure that if there is such an event again, whether it is next week, tomorrow or this evening, the response is co-ordinated and serious. I welcome the commitment to bringing in water cannons as a deterrent. We see that on our television screens in other jurisdictions as something that is positive and highly effective and that works. We need them here.

The majority of people whom I have spoken to from around the country who witnessed the scenes on our streets, on television screens and on social media are fully in support of An Garda Síochána. They feel the only response to the people involved in this sort of criminality and rioting is a good, honest, decent beating. I will be blunt about it. One probably cannot say that but I will be blunt. That is what people want to see. They want gardaí to have the powers and to know they will be safe in using a baton to attack individuals who are involved in rioting and criminality. We can talk all we like about reasons and everything else but there is absolutely no excuse for what we saw. People deserve to know that An Garda Síochána can use the powers it has to treat rioters and those involved in such incidents with force.

There is a concern among members of An Garda Síochána that in certain cases where they show force there will be video cameras and footage and they will be the ones who will be prosecuted by the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC. That is a concern that gardaí have relayed to Members of the Oireachtas. There are concerns. It is important to know, particularly in cases of public disorder such as we saw, that gardaí can fully go about their work and perform their role of defending the streets, defending people and acting in such a manner as to bring things under control.

I know there is an ongoing campaign to recruit gardaí. That is hugely important because we know the importance of gardaí, whether it is in Dublin city or other parts of the country. The Minister has introduced a lot of measures, including a recent change increasing the maximum recruitment age for gardaí to 50 years. Can the Minister say when the next campaigns will be? An individual who contacted me has been looking for this for a long time. I said that campaigns are very difficult to plan and it is not known when the next campaigns will be. The person asked where someone living in a town such as, say, Castlebar, who goes through training would be stationed. A trainee with a young family has no idea beforehand where he or she might be stationed. Would this person be stationed in Wexford, Cork or Donegal or would it be Galway, which is at least close to home? Those are the sorts of things that may be known within the force in the early days of training but perhaps act as a disincentive to people being recruited.

We need to see the Garda force brought back. I know there was a hiatus because of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which the Garda College in Templemore closed unfortunately, so there is a bit of a backlog. We also know there are people leaving. In some ways, it could be argued that people cannot be blamed for wanting to leave the Garda if they have to endure what we saw on the streets of Dublin last week. At the same time, people join An Garda Síochána with the correct motive, namely, to protect the peace and ordinary, decent people in our country. It is important that we support members of An Garda Síochána but that do we everything we can to ensure we get adequate numbers into the force in years to come. Some of the measures the Minister has put in place are steps in the right direction.

Regarding the response, it is important to ask whether, if something like this were to happen again tonight or tomorrow, there would be a different response. Would there be a more co-ordinated response and would the Garda Commissioner do things differently with regard to front-line policing? Would he have plans to do something different in response? Would it be a stronger, quicker and more co-ordinated response? Would the Commissioner have additional equipment or resources at his disposal? Could things be done differently that would have ensured a quicker or more effective response? Those are questions I know the Commissioner will answer and I know he is before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice this afternoon to address those matters.

It is hugely important that we have comfort going forward. While we cannot change what happened last Thursday, we must ensure there is adequate intelligence and adequate information gathering and monitoring of social media activity to know if something like this is going to happen.In this case, the individuals were deemed to be far right and anti-immigrant, but some people will look for any excuse to have a protest, cause a riot or upset ordinary and decent people in Dublin or anywhere these things might happen. It is important we recognise that. On this occasion, it was a co-ordinated attempt by certain individuals using far-right channels to call for people to congregate with a view to protesting and rioting, in this case about migration. The next time, who knows what it might be about? It is important that whatever the protest, wherever it is, in Dublin, Galway or a rural area, that we have an effective response by An Garda Síochána to ensure those who perpetrate it feel the full force of the law on the day they are rioting and causing trouble and following that in the courts.

We must have the sentencing necessary to act as a deterrent and force people to think twice before acting with the kind of mindless violence and destruction we saw. I welcome the commitment about additional prison places. That is ultimately necessary whether we like it or not. Every democratic country, every country that prides itself on its law and order, needs to ensure it has sufficient places to hold those convicted of serious crimes. Will the Minister elaborate in her response on her plans and the timescales for the design and planning for the additional 400 places in various locations? It is important to ensure people know we have the capacity in the system for gardaí to be able to protect and arrest, that the courts have sufficient powers to ensure prosecution, that we have sentences that act as a deterrent and punishment for the crime and prison places to hold people who are convicted.

We can talk about other issues in certain communities, but this was not a riot in a particular community. It was orchestrated. People came to an area with the sole purpose of causing trouble and harm and of looting, in a way that we have seen in other countries but not so much here, impacting on businesses. The individuals who went out looting were not patriots. They were not standing up for Ireland. They were not worried about migration. That was not a response to the issues that were mentioned. It was taking advantage of a situation of mayhem by acting in the manner we saw, which was unforgivable. It impacted on decent people and on businesses which we hope employ local people from the community in the run-up to Christmas. We saw it in Arnotts and in other places. Arnotts is synonymous with Dublin and Christmas. What we saw was shocking and we need to ensure, insofar as we can, through the Government response and the response of An Garda Síochána and whatever legislative changes that need to be made - perhaps there is sufficient legislation - that things like this do not happen.

Coimisiún na Meán worked with certain platforms to shut down certain posts, etc. I understand that many co-operated and some did not. I have been meaning to look at that. It is not an easy situation to change or rectify. Some companies that are based outside the State have platforms in the State. It is reprehensible that certain posts are allowed to be put up, but more important, once they are up that they are allowed to stay up. At our party meeting last night, we saw one incidence in the responses to a garda's wife who expressed concern about how her husband had been treated on the streets that day. The responses received were deplorable.

I commend that Minister on her work, her engagement and her proactivity on this matter and her continued engagement with the Garda Commissioner.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister to the Chamber. I thank the Fine Gael Senators for tabling this motion and for giving us the opportunity to have a debate about the real issues at play. In the hope of not being constantly hounded for qualifications to my following statement, here they are all in front of the House. Racism is abhorrent. Violence is wrong. Crime should be punished.

With that out of the way I will quickly run through a few points. The Taoiseach's statement yesterday that it is not right to connect immigration with crime is ridiculous. Not all immigrants are created equal and an immigration policy that does not recognise this will end in disaster and tragedy. We do not record crime statistics by ethnicity because to do so would offend liberal sensibilities. Other European countries do. The Dutch do. They have done so for ten years and here is what they have found. Individuals from non-western immigration backgrounds make up 14% of the population in the Netherlands. However, they commit 40% of all crimes and violent assaults. Populations from Africa or the Middle East tend to exhibit rates two to four times higher than native Dutch. In both Germany and Spain, the suspect rate of Algerian immigrants is ten times that of natives. In Italy it is 17 times that of natives. Ireland has admitted the largest group of Algerian asylum seekers in the world. Asking us not to connect crime to immigration is asking us to ignore reality. These are official statistics published by other EU governments. They are factual. Is sharing them hate speech? I fear that under the Minister's new Bill sharing them might be investigated as such.

I have long said this Government would rather receive a pat on the back from Brussels than a clap on the back from the Irish. Often we need serious issues in this country to attract the attention of the international media before the Government will do anything about them, because the Government only listens to the media. It does not listen to the people. Now Ireland has the eyes of the world on it and they are poised to see how this country is being turned into a post-democratic EU vassal state, which is about to pass censorship legislation, the likes of which we have never seen in the West so the Government will be protected from criticism by the people it is elected to govern. Perhaps that will give it pause for thought, but I will not hold my breath. For now, we will do the best we can.

This morning the Minister accused the Opposition in the Dáil of having no solutions. Here are quite a few that would solve our problems. We need an asylum processing centre at Dublin Airport. It should be a fully equipped facility with dedicated judges, clerks and civil servants. People who come to the country and seek asylum should be processed there within seven days of arrival. If they are accepted, all good. If they are found against, they should be put on the first plane home. That would take time. In the meantime, applicants should be summoned to court to have the results of their applications for the right to remain handed down to them. If they are accepted, all good. If permission is denied, they should be taken to a Garda station, put in custody and on the first plane home. No more self-service deportation orders. The Minister is in charge of the Department of Justice, not Tesco. There should be massive fines for airlines that do not meet highly stringent criteria for the checking of travel documents and ensuring legality of travel for passengers. Even if we cannot trust the Government, we can always trust companies to protect their bottom lines. At the moment, the fine is €3,000. We should increase the figure to €15,000 and we will see how many breach the rules on checking documents. The Minister wants to put rioters and looters in prison. What prison? All of them are full. Our new prison, Thornton Hall, needs to be built as soon as possible.

If the Government does anything less than this, it is not serious about law and order. I understand that Commissioner Drew Harris brought 12 PSNI officers with him when he took up the post. Let us get more. What a great shared island initiative that would be. Some members of the PSNI who live in the Republic of Ireland would welcome a transfer to An Garda Síochána. If we are having difficulty in recruiting people, the Government should give them the option. If we can borrow water cannons from the North, we can surely take some of their officers and personnel. The Government should give the rank and file officers of the PSNI an opportunity to transfer to An Garda Síochána if they wish. It would be a brilliant shared island initiative.

I also call on the Minister to put in place some financial supports for the private businesses that were victims of the riots last week.The Government should also provide victim support and counselling for the students and teachers, for all of those members of businesses who had to hide in closets behind closed doors that night, and for any member of our emergency services who was psychologically affected by last Thursday's events.

There are many ways we could handle this. I do not have time to go through everything that could be done but none of it will be done because this Government cannot see beyond the end of its nose. It behaves as if it is mentally incapable of foresight. It can only ever react, never be proactive. I reject this motion, not because I do not want to see anything done, but because I know this Government will never do what needs to be done.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for being here and I thank the Fine Gael group for putting forward this motion. It gives the House an opportunity to discuss what was arguably the most important public order event in recent times, not just in the city but in the country. I want to start, as everyone else has done, by thinking about Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire. The Cathaoirleach Gníomhach and I have both been familiar with the school for many years. I wish to mention the five-year-old child, the children, her classmates and teachers, the SNAs and everybody who works in that school. I also wish to mention their families, immediate and extended.

It is so upsetting for everybody to think that an innocent child and children could be the victims of such a vicious and violent attack. That is what we cannot lose sight of. For me and for us it is an appalling, atrocious and repulsive event to have happened in our community and I know the Chair shares that view. I commend and thank the gardaí from Mountjoy and Store Street Garda stations and from all over the Dublin metropolitan region north, the greater Dublin metropolitan area and beyond who responded. I also mention the first responders from Phibsborough fire station and others. I thank everybody working at the Mater, Temple Street and Rotunda hospitals. Those places are institutions of this State but for us, they are our local facilities and they are in the heart of our community. The people who work there, wherever they were born, are of our community. That is who we need to be thinking of.

I will not spend a whole lot of time talking about the riots and the violence, which has been condemned roundly by everybody. There is no disagreement on how unacceptable that lawlessness, criminality and riotous behaviour is and on how there is no place for it, not only in my community but in our city and country. I listened to the Garda Commissioner in the Committee on Justice and he is talking about all of the additional public order initiatives and resources and the augmentation or increases that he is pursuing in terms of tooling up or whatever is the phrase. Significant ramping up is taking place. As I said at the outset, however, this is about our community, that child, those children and every child who goes to school. It also includes every teacher and SNA who goes to teach. We have the best of schools, facilities and communities. I think of the people who intervened; the innocent bystanders who were just passing by and who did not think twice but who stopped to intervene. That represents our community and the best of Dublin.

Before the incidents of last Thursday, I have been pursuing this issue at the policing forum and the joint policing committee with my colleagues. We have been campaigning on this issue of antisocial behaviour and public safety because it is a real concern. We have not done so because it is a political tool but because it is a real concern. It is a real concern for our community. When she replies I hope the Minister will speak to the community safety partnership. The north inner city has had a community safety partnership for a number of years. The Minister has reopened two Garda stations there. There is no constituency in the country that has had two Garda stations reopen during the time of any Government, never mind this one. There is €10 million in extra funding for the Garda in Dublin, yet people do not feel safe. It is not an outrageous expectation for us to want to feel safe to: go for a walk; go to school; or go to work. The fact that businesses in the city have to invest in private security is a given and is one of their biggest costs. Now the question is whether the schools have to as well. Do the schools have to put in place private security? That is completely unacceptable.

One of the Senators asked for funding. There should be funding but we need to address the root causes of the lack of safety and public order. We need to ensure there is an elimination, that is an absolute tackling and ending of the ongoing, consistent, persistent and open drug dealing, usage and distribution in the city centre. I could set my watch by it. I refer to all the other antisocial behaviour that goes on and that makes people uncomfortable and leaving them not knowing what will happen. As for people going to work in shops or restaurants, the fact that some restaurants operate a locked-door policy is not good enough. That is not my Dublin; it is not the Dublin of any of us. We need to look at the root causes of this. The analysis is being done on the riots. The public order initiatives and other initiatives are welcome and will be supported but we want a safe community to live and work in and to visit.

Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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The Minister is welcome. On behalf of my party, I first wish to send my best wishes and prayers to the six-year-old girl who remains seriously ill, as well as to the school caretaker, who is a hero and who is also still receiving treatment in hospital after that awful day last Thursday when they were viciously attacked. Our thoughts are with them and their families. Please God they will make a full recovery. Our thoughts are also with the boy and girl who, thankfully, been able to go home but who will no doubt need continued support. Many of the children at the school will need ongoing support and care. It is every parent’s worst nightmare.

High praise should be given to those who quickly intervened and risked their lives to stop the attacked. Caio Benicio, Warren Donoghue, Alan Loren-Guille and Siobhán Kearney are some of the people to thank, as well as all those who ran over to help. We also have to praise and thank the Dublin Fire Brigade, the Garda and the emergency services, which acted so quickly to respond; heroes and heroines one and all. These people represent the spirit, heart and soul of all of the people of Ireland. On that little patch of ground on Parnell Square, we witnessed modern Ireland and its people at their best in the midst of a life-threatening frenzy. It is a reminder that irrespective of skin colour, class or creed, we all depend on one another. We rely on one another's strengths and weaknesses as we engage in life in the good and not-so-good times. There is a lesson for all of us in the Oireachtas from the selflessness of those who endangered themselves to help others. We need to value and cherish our health workers, education workers, gardaí and fire brigade workers because in times like this lives depend on them being able to do their jobs and they must have the resources and decent working pay and conditions they deserve.

In the aftermath of the attack, what happened was surreal for many people looking on. I send messages of support and solidarity to the business community of Dublin for the personal hurt caused to them by the attacks on their businesses, the loss they incurred and the implications of those losses for their businesses and staff at this important time, the run-up to Christmas.Our thoughts and thanks are also with the emergency services, especially the gardaí and members of the Dublin Fire Brigade, who were on the streets being viciously attacked and abused by thugs, egged on by right-wing fanatics in search of a divisive cause.

How has this Government responded to all that? Unfortunately, the Minister still cannot admit we lost control, that her gardaí lost control in Dublin last week and there was a failure to keep people safe. I was looking at the statements from Niall Hodgins of the GRA who spoke on radio this morning. He said:

... there was no plan here. Members turned up simply because of .. messages being passed around from garda to garda. ... no instruction came down to the members. I could give you a myriad of examples and be sitting here all night about a number of text messages ... from garda to garda about witnessing what was happening to their colleagues ... [and deciding to go to their assistance]. It was absolutely chaotic.

That is what the representative of the GRA said. That is a damning indictment of the Garda Commissioner, to be absolutely frank with the Minister. How can she possibly stand over a situation like that? It is entirely unacceptable. It is not just Sinn Féin saying control was lost in Dublin city centre last week, but retailers, workers, shoppers, visitors to our capital city and gardaí themselves. This situation has been building for months and months, but instead of doing something, the Minister allowed it to worsen. I have to be frank with her that I do not believe she should stay in office. Those scenes of her being flanked by gardaí some months ago insisting the city was safe have really come back to haunt her, because we know the centre of town has not been a safe space for some considerable time. Unfortunately, the Minister appears to be in a state of denial about that issue. After more than a decade of Fine Gael in Government, there are now fewer gardaí in Dublinper capita, not to mention the closure of Garda stations and issues with training and resources.

We need a change in leadership. We need someone in charge who will do the job and put public safety first because the public do not feel safe. The Government was too slow to expand the capacity of the Garda College at Templemore and too slow to increase the Garda training allowance. It looks set to miss its Garda recruitment target again this year by a margin of about 20%. Please do not tell us 1,000 gardaí will be hired because the Government is not going to make that target. It looks like the figure may be as low as 700. How on earth can the Minister stand over that?

After everything that happened last Thursday, there is still no improvement in how people feel walking around certain parts of Dublin city. The Minister is saying there is an increased Garda presence but yesterday outside the same school where children and care workers were stabbed, there was a man drinking alcohol and lying across the steps of the front door of the school at pick-up time, and there was not a garda in sight to protect those children leaving school. That is a fact. On Sunday night, there were reports of a stabbing incident on Talbot Street outside a pharmacy. As I highlighted earlier in the week, I was speaking to a friend who witnessed a highly intoxicated man in a Dame Street lane who attacked several bar staff in two pubs. When they rang the Garda for assistance no one came and they were left to deal with the situation themselves. I am being very clear that this is not the fault of gardaí as we know resources are not there. We are 500 gardaí short. This is the Minister’s response. She has failed and she needs to resign.

Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I thank the Minister for coming to the Chamber. I pay tribute to all those who came to the aid of the victims of the horrendous events that took place last Thursday - Leanne, the other crèche worker and the teacher who were there with the children, Caio Benicio for his bravery in bringing down the attacker, and Siobhan Kearney for her incredible presence of mind, so justice will now be done to the assailant, and all those who helped in those shocking and frenzied few minutes. I also pay tribute to the gardaí, our firefighters, bus drivers and Luas drivers and our local authority staff whose lives were endangered on Thursday night. The livelihoods of retail, hospitality and other workers across the city were put in danger because of the wanton destruction and events that should never have happened.

Last Thursday was a trauma for all of us who love and live in this city. I am reeling, as are so many others, and we feel really angry that our city could have been so disgracefully ravaged last Thursday night. I am in Dublin 23 years now. Those of us who were born here and those of us who have made our lives here want to be proud of our city. It is our capital city, yet when I talk to people on their doorsteps and on the streets in our communities there is an overwhelming sense that Dublin has gone to the dogs, the city centre has gone to the dogs and there is no respect or pride in our main street, O’Connell Street. There is a feeling of being unsafe. People are afraid to walk around their own communities or the city centre and there is a sense that the people whose lives have fallen apart have been left on our streets. Whether it is due to alcoholism, drug addiction or mental health issues, those people need to be better supported.

What is the Government response to this? We have had a community safety forum in place now for some time, as has been said, having been announced to great fanfare in August. However, it has not been given a real budget to go out and do the things it needs to do to try to make our inner city a safer place in which young people, older people and people raising families and going out to work can feel a sense of pride and feel safe in their community. We have a Garda station on O’Connell Street that is closed for some of the most important hours of the day. Community policing numbers are only a fraction of what they were only a few short years ago. In 2020, we had 71 community police in the north central area, but there are only 20 now. Community policing was supposed to be the great white hope for our communities, but we have seen no respect for community policing at the top of An Garda Síochána. I speak regularly to our community gardaí and I am in awe of the work they do. They do an incredible job but they are utterly stretched. Overall policing numbers in the north central area have fallen by 10% in the past six years. When it comes to those working with kids who have offended or are at risk of offending, we have just five juvenile liaison officers for the whole north central area. None of this points to a Minister for Justice or a Government that is taking policing in our communities seriously.

What happened last Thursday night was a failure at the top of An Garda Síochána and a failure by the Government to properly resource the force There must be accountability. We are hurting, Dubliners are hurting and this Government is rubbing salt in our wounds by insulting our intelligence by insisting that last Thursday night's event could not have been predicted. I stood on Parnell Square at 3.30 p.m. last Thursday and it was ugly then. It was also clear that once darkness fell, it was going to become even uglier. Staff in the chipper two and a half miles up the road could tell you something was going to happen that night. At 6 p.m., there were lads and lassies in there talking about the trouble they were going to stir up in the city centre that night and the most basic read of commentary online would tell us there was going to be trouble and that is was going to be serious. Please do not insult our intelligence by peddling the line that this could not have been foreseen. If the community gardaí were out in our community and we had gardaí on the streets that night, the wanton destruction of our city and the endangerment of lives would not have taken place. Shame on this Government for failing to ensure there were enough boots on the ground to have staved off those riots and shame on the those at the top of An Garda Síochána that gardaí had to resort to WhatsApp messages to try to get backup. It is a joke. While Fine Gael can clap itself on the back and talk about increased powers for gardaí and increased penalties, which I see in the motion, the people of Dublin and elsewhere in the country know it is really about numbers. It is about a visible policing presence on our streets so people can feel safer when going about their business on their streets and not letting those who are intent on creating trouble win out.

People want to create trouble for a whole variety of reasons. I take real issue with some of the language that has been used over the last number of hours, particularly by Fine Gael but also Fianna Fáil Ministers and Oireachtas Members. It was thuggery on the streets but there are people in our communities who are disaffected, disenfranchised and feel left out. We have to ask why people felt the need to go on the streets that night. It was the far right but a much bigger group of people was involved as well. People do not want to know what the gardaí are going to do after the event; they want to know what the gardaí did to prevent it.

We have had the spectacle over the past few months of Fianna Fáil rightly arguing about the need for greater Garda resources. Fianna Fáil is in government.It had the Taoiseach, it has the Tánaiste, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for public expenditure and reform. We need to see resourcing for An Garda Síochána. I am glad that we are having this debate today. I am glad we are having this debate today but we need to have accountability and to take seriously the need for a visible Garda policing presence on our streets in Dublin, so that visitors and Dubliners can feel safe on our streets.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I move amendment No. 1:

After the final paragraph under “abhors and condemns:”, to insert the following paragraph: “- classist, racist and dehumanising rhetoric directed towards marginalised communities, including ethnic minorities and those seeking refuge and asylum in Ireland;”.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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I second the amendment.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I thank Senator Doherty for engaging with me on the amendments, especially the important one where we add the reference to class. It gives context to some of the scenarios which we have seen unfold. I start by expressing my solidarity, love and support to all affected by the attack at Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire last week. Those students will have that attack imprinted on their little minds forever, as will their parents, carers and teaching staff. They should have every support made available to them. Although I was not as young as them when I witnessed my first knife attack, I know the mark it leaves inside one's body and heart. None of them have left my mind since Thursday.

Watching what unfolded afterwards also had a profound impact on my spiritual and even physical self with regard to the historical trauma that lives in my body from seeing those who live on the fringes turn on one another and minority communities. If only they knew they were just as screwed over by the system and more powerless. While we will mostly focus on reaction and response, we should try to understand why and how we got here. In reflecting on this question in recent days, I am, time and time again, struck by the role that those with political influence and power play in creating the conditions that led to the disorder we witnessed last Thursday. Do they accept accountability or do they wish to distract from it by calling for more boots on the ground?

The oppressed will always be asked if they condone violence and if they condone this crime or that crime, yet capitalistic violence, especially that of the last 30 years, imposed by successive formations of the same government parties, has gone unaccounted for. The structural violence this has imposed and the lack of safety it has created in our communities is not inseparable from the lack of safety created by riots. One is just more concentrated in place. Why do we not respond with the same passion and outrage when it comes to the housing, health, education and poverty crises? Other policies which I see as violent and not safe include austerity, children being raised in hotels, direct provision, our drug laws, the State oppression of Travellers, underfunding of mental health, prison, the guards not answering calls from domestic violence victims, treatment of single mothers and austerity policies that cripple them, the referendum in 2004 on citizenship, poverty among our citizens with a disability, failure of those in State care and aftercare, as well as homelessness. When do we take accountability for the lack of safety and violence? It seems to be okay if it is a legitimate form, as legislation.

Violence is violence. Do we condone the State which we create that also creates the conditions where people do not feel safe? Angela Davis once said, "Despite the important gains of antiracist social movements over the last half century, racism hides from view within institutional structures". Although our history is not that of the US, the same is true here. Racism exists in our structures, just as classism always has. If only there was cohesion between the two struggles, we would be a hell of a lot closer to liberation. Let us ask ourselves where and in what structures this State has, since its inception, built division into its very fabric. This conversation goes above and beyond individual acts of racism and violence, which of course must never be tolerated. However, when it comes to movements, there is a clear intersection between class and race, but issues have become individualistic under global capitalism. This leaves a hole for those who hold supremacist views to undermine every community in this country. When they are not focusing on migrants, it will be the LGBT community and women. Each and every time the State fails its citizens, we hand more of our young men over to those malefactors.

This State, in equal collaboration with its citizens, needs to accept and evaluate the historical conditions which motivate the present. Many people do not condone the riots but feel disenfranchised and excluded from living a good life. They may not be on the streets but they are there judging this Government and those before this Government for their failures. They are part of this conversation too.

Some of Foucault's work looks at the objectification of what he calls subject. That is about the person being divided in themselves or divided from others, such as the sane, the insane, the rich, the poor, the criminals and the good boys. These divisions are cemented in policy, structure, and in the language of scumbags and thugs. We must work to understand violence in and of itself. Instead, yesterday, in the Chamber, one Senator said they should be convicted. Who are "they"? Instead of asking why we are here and how we can create a better society, the Senator wants to just jail them. To what end? When has prison ever solved violence?

According to Danielle Sered, the director of Common Justice, a restorative justice programme in New York, there are four core drivers of violence. They are shame, isolation, exposure to violence and an inability to meet one's economic needs. The highly organised far right has fed off all four of those things. Experiencing violence, along with feelings of shame, humiliation, exploitation and oppression, are drivers of violence. We all want to end violence and we all want safety but for some reason, we refuse to look at its causes. The best way to stem the reach and the furthering of the agenda of fascists is by creating a fairer society and equal conditions for all. Jean-Paul Sartre once said, "Violence is good for those who have nothing to lose." Instead, today, I ask this House to consider why people feel that they have nothing to lose.

Emer Currie (Fine Gael)
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I begin by extending my sympathies to the three children and the care worker who were attacked and stabbed on Thursday, the school and school community, An Garda Síochána, which was on the firing line on Thursday afternoon and night, and their families, who were terrified, watching as events unfolded on social media. I extend my sympathies to shop staff and owners who were targeted by opportunistic looting and all the people who look after our city and the public realm daily, who watched as a mob tried to burn it down. I also extend them to transport workers who take pride in their jobs, with us taking pride in them in return, who saw their trams and buses, symbols of our State, destroyed, and to the public who were caught up in the sorry mess and experienced, maybe for the first time, what hate looks like when it is up close. Every immigrant now feels that he or she has a target on his or her back. Dublin has been tarnished by the events of the last six days.

Two stories come to mind. One is that on Thursday afternoon, I had guests in Leinster House. They made a lovely gesture in presenting me with an award. I could not attend an awards ceremony on Saturday in the Gresham, to which people came from around the globe to attend, including a woman who had family from California, who had never been to Dublin or Ireland before. They spent Thursday night in their hotel room watching what unfolded on O'Connell Street. I was canvassing on Ashtown on Friday and Saturday. There had been a knife incident in Aldi in Ashtown. I spoke to a mother of a migrant family who is afraid to leave the House.

I accept that Dublin has become a tale of two cities, with areas to go to and not go to, if one can help it. We know that is not acceptable. We still have cycles of poverty in our society, and yet we have an economy that is performing strongly. I am of a school of thought, and think the Minister is too, where Mandela said, "As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality exist in our world, none of us can truly rest." I really believe that. I also believe, however, that there are threats in our society that we have never experienced before to this extent, namely, populism, prejudice and polarisation.There are many out there who are exploiting those threats. Yes, Dublin has become a tale of two cities and we have to address that but Ireland is also becoming increasingly divided with a menacing element that we are not used to. It is not just a policing issue. We must address policing and a policing response but we also have to look at the underlying issues as to why we are there. As I said, poverty, disadvantage and inequality are enduring problems but if you have undermined our Garda and trust in the institutions of the State over the years, then you are part of the problem. If you have called into question the legitimacy of our democracy you are part of the problem. If you are using immigration to divide people to create a platform for yourself, you are part of the problem. If you are othering children who already feel different and you are teaching hate, you are part of the problem.

From watching the Minister work on community safety partnerships, I am aware that she understands joined-up thinking. The Minister understands that it is not just a policing response; it is the totality of understanding the dynamics at play here. I have complete confidence in the Minister and in An Garda Síochána. There are areas that the Minister knows and I know must be addressed. I have spoken to the Minister previously about how the resources we have are not equal across the city. This needs to be addressed. We have to make being a garda a job that people want for life. We have to return to the time when a person would become a garda in their 20s and would stick with it. The pension is an issue that is brought up with me. It used to be the case that the pension would keep people in the job. We also need to look at a Dublin strategy because since Covid, we have not looked at Dublin in a holistic way. Since Covid there are empty commercial properties and the city has changed. There needs to be a coming together. The Minister is working with the community safety partnership but there also has to be bigger thinking in relation to Dublin. We saw our city set alight last Thursday. It has broken our hearts but there are people who need to accept they have been playing with fire over recent years and they have a part to play in this as well.

Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail)
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Like every other Member here I was absolutely shocked by the savage attack on a young child, her protectors and her carers in a very public place. I was horrified by it. It matters little to me whether the person who perpetrated the crime was Irish, non-Irish, English or whatever. That is not the important thing. The important point is that this crime happened and it has to be condemned by each and every person here.

I have heard a lot of arguments about what happened subsequently. I will confine my remarks in a broader way to my view of where we are at in what is legitimate and acceptable protest on our streets and what is not. I have the greatest of admiration for Senator Lynn Ruane, and I always have and will have, but I cannot buy into her argument here this evening that we must look at the backgrounds of the individuals, that we must sympathise with them, and that this is the core thing we should concentrate on. I believe that all sections of community need to be helped but the focus is not on them now. I know about poverty. I have been around quite a while and I know many huge families with 14 and more who were brought up in tough times with hardly enough to eat, and with poor housing and poor sanitary conditions. Many of those people went on and did very well for themselves and most have never felt the need to take up a stick or a hatchet to attack anybody. There is a responsibility on all of us. I also know a little bit about addiction. I am an alcoholic myself and I have associated with people in addiction and worked with them. I understand the huge pressures they are under as well but, again, addiction is no excuse for behaviour like we witnessed in our streets. I want to preface my remarks by saying that.

The great writer Samuel Johnson once said humorously that "the Irish are a fair people - they never speak well of one another." I believe we are a very fair-minded people and a very tolerant people. We are the kind who say "You go your way, I go my way and if you do not interfere with me or hurt me then you are entitled to do what you want". That is a very fair way of approaching life. Our tolerance is characteristic of us as Irish people. We do not have any problem with people protesting on our streets. In many cases these protests can be quite useful and a useful addendum to public debate. People on both ends of the spectrum, extreme right and extreme left, can parade and flag wave to their hearts' content and we let them. There is, however, one condition attached to that, which is that these people must show respect for the rights of the public and that they must fully co-operate with our gardaí, who have the unenviable job of trying to police huge numbers of people in protest, peaceful or otherwise, in our public spaces.

The right to protest is not universally accepted. Try to protest in China, Russia or Cuba and see what will happen. Try to protest in most of the Middle East authorities, which have huge support on the streets in our cities at present in respect of the conflict of Hamas. Try to protest there. Try to stand up and wave an LGBT flag there and see what will happen to you. I say that as a strong supporter of LGBT but I find it highly ironic when I see their banners waving in support of Hamas.

There was a very important and huge breach of what most people would see as an acceptable level of protest some years ago in this city in Jobstown when the then Tánaiste, Joan Burton, and her female assistant were terrorised and locked into their vehicle for almost three hours. Anyone who suffers in the slightest from claustrophobia will know the horror of that. No-one answered for it. Yes people went to court and they walked free, there are no complaints about that but then people went around smiling when they were criticised afterwards and said "They were found innocent". That is a very low bar for a public representative to have as to what is acceptable in protest or not, to say they were found innocent. Public representatives and TDs have a responsibility here. It is a privilege to be here and when they are out on the streets, the very least they can do is act responsibly.

As well as that, some of the people who were most vociferous in support of what happened to Joan Burton are very vociferous now against the crowd who are misbehaving and blackguarding because they are from the extreme right. I do not care about the extreme right or the extreme left: they are all equal to me. I believe that most of them have their own long-term policy of subverting our State, but that is a whole new argument and we will not go there now.

I have confidence in the Minister and I have confidence in the Garda Commissioner.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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Hear, hear.

Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail)
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This Minister has done extremely great work. No-one is talking about the crackdown on organised crime in this country or about the huge reduction in the level of violent deaths and assassinations, just to name one aspect. Our gardaí are doing a great job. There are people in the street and at home who depend on the Garda for reassurance. When things get fraught like this people - and especially elderly people - look to our politicians to introduce some level of calm and reassurance into their lives that things are okay and that we can settle things. The last thing they want is politicians hyping it up and looking for people's heads.That is not responsible behaviour. If political parties say they are fit for government, when they are in opposition they are duty-bound to act responsibly as well.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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Thank you, Senator.

Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail)
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I will finish up if the Acting Chair will give me one more minute. Some of these parties are only decades away from having supported murder and mayhem in this country, North and South. Some of these parties are only decades away from having supported the murder of my friend Jerry McCabe and many other Garda and Defence Forces personnel. Some of these parties are still commemorating the perpetrators of those crimes as heroes. It is time those parties stood up, got real and stopped speaking out of both sides of their mouths.

I commend this Fine Gael motion.

Tom Clonan (Independent)
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I thank the Minister for coming in. I hope I have enough time to say what I want to say. The most important people in all this are the victims of the stabbings last Thursday. I preface anything I am going to say with that. I am not looking for anybody's resignation or sacking. What we need now is solidarity and a bit of unity in this House, but in order to do that, we have to face the facts of life.

I was downstairs in committee room 4, where the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána was being questioned by the Joint Committee on Justice, and Senator Ruane asked a very important question. She asked what the primary driver is for the latent, inchoate violence in our society. I am a Dubliner. I went to school in the 1960s, believe it or not, and Dublin has changed. It has become a more violent place, and the reason for that, the primary driver, as Senator Ruane asked the Commissioner, is social inequality. We have a large number of citizens who feel unfairness and exclusion right across the spectrum: housing, education, health and social protection. That is the primary driver, and we have to address that. We are not going to police our way out of this, although policing is a very important component. There are many moving parts in what has happened in recent months, and I will try to go through them.

I am a Dubliner. I remember the riots in 1981, during the hunger strike, when the British Embassy was burnt down. What is the difference between now and then? I will tell the House the difference. The gardaí were not the primary target of the rioters. The gardaí were in the way. They wanted to get at the embassy. There was a political ideology, whatever one might call it. My father was a garda. He was involved in those riots and, as a garda, was able to live in the community he policed. He could afford a house and was able to have the modest ambition of sending all five of us to university. That is something that needs to be addressed. If we want to attract and retain people in An Garda Síochána, in teaching, in nursing and across all our public services, the fundamental building blocks of our society, we have to reverse the dynamic we have seen over the past 20 years of austerity and a neoliberal economic agenda.

The last major riots were in 2006, with the Love Ulster parade. What is different between now and then? The gardaí were not the target. We, as politicians, were not the target. Again, it was an angry, inchoate mob. The other difference was that digital media were in their infancy, so the rioters did not have the kind of capacity to collectively organise in the way they have now.

In 2023, the riot we had last Thursday was the culmination of a number of things. As to what happened on Thursday, those tragic events, unlike the statements some Senators have made in this House, that stabbing was not predictable. I am sorry to say that these things happen. As Senator O'Sullivan said, it does not matter whether the perpetrator was English, Irish, Japanese or Italian. These things happen every now and again. The attack, however, was seized on by people outside this House. We also need to address as the elephant in the room the fact that we now have Members of these Houses who are prepared to engage in dog-whistle politics to provoke hatred. After this motion, we need to have a discussion as a House about what we think is acceptable in terms of our political discourse and our narratives.

Who are we looking at? Who is responsible for these riots? The social inequality is being mobilised by far-right groups. We have 12 far-right groups active in Ireland at the moment and they are exploiting the unfairness and exclusion so many people experience. In 2022, NUI Maynooth published a major piece of research, Resisting the Far Right. A recurring theme among the far-right, dating back to the Nazis in 1930s Germany, is to create a perception of crisis with an immediately and easily identifiable enemy of the people. For the Nazis, the enemies were Jews, homosexuals and Gypsies, to use the language of their time. Today, for Irish fascists on the far-right, the enemies of the people are immigrants, Travellers, asylum seekers, the LGBTQ community and Roma communities. In their Telegram groups, on their Facebook pages and X accounts and elsewhere, they spread conspiracy theories and attempt to engender a moral panic about the groups they have targeted as enemies. I am sorry to say there are people in this House who seek to amplify that moral panic and that false sense of crisis.

I am running out of time, but the NUI Maynooth study is so good and it identifies solutions to this. We must fund and empower community-based civic groups and NGOs to educate, inform and counter the toxic narratives of the far-right. Most importantly and fundamentally, there is a requirement to immediately address the stressors exploited by the far-right: the cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis and crises in health and social well-being. We fixed our economy; now we have to fix our society. We need to do that together and in solidarity.

I have given a great deal of thought to what is happening now. I listened very carefully to the speeches that were made outside here in September, during the protests. Again and again, the speakers said we are the enemy. They want to bring this edifice down. They are targeting us as politicians. With these far-right groups there is also an extreme form of misogyny. They will target female TDs, Senators and councillors. I am sorry to say this, but I think it is only a matter of time before a Member of this House, but particularly a female Member of this House, is attacked.

Finally, An Garda Síochána has also been targeted. Gardaí are called by these far-right groups our henchmen. We are traitors to whatever warped idea they have of a republic. We really need to ensure that An Garda Síochána is properly equipped and properly supported in order that it can police this city. We do not need paramilitary-style policing in Dublin. We need to continue our great tradition of policing by consent. An Garda Síochána still occupies a wonderful place in our society but it needs our support. One of the features of the riots last week was the deliberate targeting of members of An Garda Síochána, members of our public transport services, members of the fire service and paramedics. That is a step change, and they need our support, but we all need to get together. Fundamentally, the social contract has to be repaired.

Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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I do not always agree with Senator Clonan but I agree with almost everything he said about things that have been amplified by people across the country, including people in both Houses. That needs to be addressed. Everyone here is coming from a very genuine background and believes what he or she is saying is correct, but there have been contributions even today saying "violence" and "unsafe" about ten times as if that is actually factually true in this country. Sometimes when people make contributions they talk about Dublin solely, but this is an incredibly safe country. Only recently, the Global Peace Index stated that Ireland was the third safest country in the world, just behind Iceland and Denmark. There is an awful lot of good things in this country that make it safe. We can talk about violence and people feeling unsafe, but it is not factually true, taking everything into account. Why do people think so many people want to come to this country? It is because of prosperity, jobs and life expectancy, which in this country is the highest in Europe. We have so many good things in this country. That is why people come here. If we keep talking it down as if this is an unsafe place and a violent society, that is not factually true, albeit what happened on Thursday was an absolute disgrace.When we have people talking about how our problem is immigrants and people coming from abroad, it is our responsibility to counter that.

I hardly ever listen to Joe Duffy but I was listening to his show during the week. I do not know if anyone heard her, but a woman originally from Lithuania was on. She has been living in Ireland for quite some time. She spoke about how she sees herself as Lithuanian-Irish but no more will she call herself Lithuanian-Irish. She now calls herself just Lithuanian because of what happened last week and the narrative of what happened. She made a very good point. She said that if every foreign national in this country went on strike, the place would fall apart. What happened last Thursday would not have been rectified if it were not for the non-nationals, along with Irish people, who came on the scene and those who helped afterwards.

I saw the Minister act as a Minister for Justice in my home town when we were terrified by antisocial behaviour and criminals putting the fear of God into people in Clonmel. About a year ago, a group representing a large proportion of the town's population met her and asked her to intervene and support gardaí to help our town. That never got the coverage that Dublin would get, obviously because of what happened in Dublin last week, but incidents such as this in rural Ireland normally do not get the same coverage.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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The Minister has been called to vote in the Dáil.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I am very sorry.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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I propose that we suspend the sitting until the conclusion of the division in the Lower House. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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On the resumption of the debate, Senator Ahearn is in possession. He is sharing time with Senator Dolan and has ten seconds remaining. That is ten seconds not ten minutes.

Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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As I was saying, the Minister showed in Clonmel how her intervention, working with the Garda, can change things. We have seen it from the Government response in Limerick before. We need the same response the Minister made in Clonmel and previous Governments made in Limerick, which is to show force. As she said on TV, these people need to be held accountable for their crimes and locked up.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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It was an absolutely horrendous attack on Parnell Square for a young girl, the other victims, the family and the school. It was down to the bravery of those who intervened, who acted on instinct. Both people who have been here for generations and people who moved to this country were involved in intervening and trying to save young people on Parnell Square. Afterwards, thugs made an attack on our capital city, our gardaí and people in our transport services on the Luas and the buses. This was an attack on our democracy and we stand behind our Minister for Justice when we have an attack on our democracy. We stand behind the Minister for Justice. We stand together united and in solidarity and that is what we as public representatives in this country, which is a democracy, are doing. What we are seeing here is pure hatred. Hatred is driving the actions and behaviours of people in our capital city. These are unprecedented events and there is no-one in this House who can say they would have seen something like this happen.

Dublin 1 was my home for seven or eight years and I walked in and out of the city. I lived on the North Circular Road near Summerhill and I loved living close to the city. I loved the freedom it gave and the fact I could move freely. It is heartbreaking to hear that happened in Dublin 1. Dublin city centre is a home to so many from so many different backgrounds and so many different nationalities and that is especially true of Dublin 1. It is such a mix and has so much to offer. The challenge we have now is this feeling safety is at stake. Something the Minister is driving at in her role is hatred legislation and what we see here is very much us and them. That is what it comes down to. There are 30-odd different nationalities in a school I know in a small town in the west of Ireland. When we look at our childcare, our schools and our healthcare or when we go to any of our services, we have so many people who are supporting us here in Ireland. As speakers have said, if we did not have that our country would fall apart. This hatred is what we stand against and every single day we are in here we will stand against hatred.

Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein)
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I join others in extending my thoughts to those who were injured at Parnell Square and wish them a speedy recovery. We send every blessing to them. What happened in the aftermath of these horrific attacks was a disgrace. There were burnt-out cars, buses and a Luas tram, smashed-up shop fronts, workers hiding in the basements of shops and restaurant staff from beyond these shores who were afraid to leave their workplaces to go home. Brave gardaí were isolated, assaulted and left high and dry. Gardaí were not even able to mount a baton charge on Parnell Street. There are not enough gardaí, so Dublin gets burnt. There were 8 ft gaps between the gardaí during their baton charge. Gardaí are supposed to protect us from these people. The Commissioner is supposed to protect his force but public safety collapsed and it was a disgrace.

The truth is that people have felt unsafe and in danger in Dublin for some time and gardaí simply do not have the numbers and resources they require. To suggest these riots, as extreme as they were, were unforeseeable is a bit of a joke because people have been saying in Dublin for some time that they do not feel safe. They have told the Government, Oireachtas committees, TDs, Senators, newspapers and anyone who will listen to their fears. Small escalations have happened over the city in the last 12 months since Covid. There have been attacks on buildings and the targeting of immigrants and people from other ethnic backgrounds. Buildings have been set on fire. Not a month goes by without a homophobic or transphobic attack being reported in the LGBT press in GCN. Tourists have been left with life-altering injuries. The idea the Garda should not go at these people because if it does, it will force them into becoming some sort of coherent group has been completely undermined because they are pretty coherent as it is. It has been proved all around the world that if civil power is not prepared to take on these people, it falls to ordinary people, other people, to do it and what do we have then? The lessons go back all the way back to the 1930s. They cannot be let do this.

I cannot believe it has been ignored for so long because the signs have been all around us. The signs are literally all around us. This is not legitimate protest. Look at what they did. There has not been so much destruction on O'Connell Street since 1916. They are not trying to liberate any kind of Ireland I want to live in, one where people are attacked because they are brown. Where do we go next? Who is next up against the wall for them? One could ask some of our TDs and Senators, because they have a shopping list. As Joe Brolly said, the far right hates Ireland. They hate women, they hate the new Irish, they hate LGBT people and the despise trans people. This is toxic and it is not on. We cannot have this. The Garda Commissioner has to do his job.We need leadership and solutions but neither the Government, the Minister nor the Garda Commissioner can provide that at this stage. In Sinn Féin's view, it is time for the Minister and the Garda Commissioner to step aside.

Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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Well said.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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Colleagues, there are six more speakers on my list and we have to call on the Minister to respond at 4.30 p.m., so please be as brief as possible and share time if possible.

Barry Ward (Fine Gael)
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I will not take as much time as I would like on this issue but I want to say a couple of things. I was actually on Parnell Square last Thursday when this happened. I heard the screams of the children outside Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire. It very quickly became apparent how much distress and panic there was on the street at the time. When the emergency services arrived, I saw the firemen, in particular, pinning down the man who was struck with the helmet by the Deliveroo driver. As a father of only six months, it was such a distressing event to see.

All of us, first and foremost, are thinking of the families who were struck that day by a mindless act, an act which was not predictable. To suggest otherwise is very unfair on the people who are expected to read the minds of people who are not predictable and who may have other difficulties that have caused them to behave in a certain way. It is appalling. The last speaker said that gardaí are there to protect us and that is exactly what I saw them doing on Parnell Square last week. They arrived at the scene and put order on it. They put protection in place although they were frustrated in that regard by a small element of people who came into town. Again, it has been suggested that this too was entirely predictable, as if there had not been similar calls on social media previously that did not turn out the same way. I do not accept the premise that this was all totally foreseeable and should have been predicted. Nobody is happy with how things got out of control. Nobody is happy with the fact that a small element, not all of whom are far right - there were a few people directing it but there was a criminal element too - took advantage of a situation. As has been said by others, the people who were targeted were the same first responders, the gardaí who attended at the scene and who were molested, abused, attacked and assaulted by people who will, I hope, face the full rigours of the law. It is not fair to say that it was predictable or that there should have been a huge stock of public order police sitting in vans around Dublin city centre in the event that calls from a small number of people would actually be responded to by people not from city centre Dublin. There has been an unfairness in the characterisation of this as involving only inner-city Dublin people because it did not; they came from other parts of Dublin and from other counties around the country as well. All of it has disgusted right-minded people and everybody is appalled by what happened. To then shift the burden of responsibility for that behaviour to the gardaí, the Garda Commissioner and the Minister is ridiculous. If a crime is committed that is not the fault of the people who are there to police crime and it is unreasonable to talk about it in those terms. It is far too easy to let those responsible off the hook. They bear responsibility for their behaviour and they will face the rigours of the law in that regard.

In terms of the answers, that is not easy either. One speaker said earlier that this has been ignored for so long but having worked with the Minister on this issue, I know that is patently untrue. Over a year ago, the Minister secured specific budgetary provisions for extra gardaí on the street, most of whom have gone to Dublin. She also secured specific provisions for civilians within An Garda Síochána in order to get gardaí out of stations and on the beat, where they want to be, solving crime and policing in the way they signed up to. In recent times, there has also been an extra allocation of over €10 million for gardaí in Dublin. These are reactions that came ahead of this and yet some people and parties seek to politicise this and make political gains from it. That is obvious and people see it for what it is.

I also want to comment on speeches in this House, from Members of this House, that have been, whether they recognise it or not, sympathetic to the elements who seek to sow the seeds of hate in this country. I refer to people who bolster the arguments of mindless idiots online, who propagate a narrative that is false, wrong and grossly unfair. I have to say, having spoken to friends of mine who look different to people who are ethnically Irish, that I would hate to be in their shoes. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for somebody who sounds different or looks different in this Ireland, notwithstanding the fact that they contribute a great deal more to this country than many of our so-called native Irish people. The first step we need to take now is to make sure those people know they are wanted, welcome and part of our society. They are our friends, neighbours and work colleagues and we want them here. That is something that we must do, as well as making sure the streets are safe and that people feel safe on our streets. We need to address these issues and whatever way it is done, that message needs to go out very clearly to people who come here. The comment was made earlier that if they stopped helping us, providing assistance to our economy, working with us and taking on jobs, we would be in a very bad place. We need to send the message out to those people that they are part of our community and we welcome them as such.

Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I stand foursquare behind the Minister. She is doing a fine job and should continue to do it. I also think the Garda Commissioner is doing a fine job and he should continue to do it.

On the riot, I am probably the only person in this room was ever actually involved in a riot. I was sergeant in charge of a riot section and we faced 15,000 people on that particular day. I can tell the House that it is a damn scary place to be when one is facing a madding crowd but our gardaí did well. There is a notion about that there were not enough gardaí but are those who are screaming about Garda resources willing to fund 300 gardaí sitting in a barracks somewhere in Dublin in case they are needed on a given night? Let us be honest. We had a normal policing situation but as Senators Clonan and Ward have said, these situations can get out of control very quickly and there is very little that can be done about it. Our gardaí have to be commended on the amount they actually saved. We all know the damage that was done but there could have been an awful lot more damage.

We have to look at a number of issues with respect to An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces, and I take this opportunity to ask the Minister to do so. We must examine why so many members are leaving and do not want to stay. One of the issues that the Minister is going to have to discuss with her colleague in the Department of public expenditure and reform, is that of Garda pensions because of the impact it is having on members of the force, including being a reason for some leaving. I also want to bring the head of intelligence into this debate. I have been accused of racism because I say it must be an Irish citizen who heads up our intelligence service. I ask the Minister, before any appointment is made, to consider some of the things I have already put on the record in this House.

Every single time something goes wrong in this country, the call goes out to fire the Minister, to get the Minister out. What are we going to do about that? What does that solve for anybody? Does that help the child and the care worker who are still lying in hospital? No, it does not. The same is true of the calls to sack the Garda Commissioner. What will we do then? Unfortunately, I was here when we drummed one Minister out of office. It is a despicable way to go. As an independent Senator, I stand behind the Minister. She is doing the job she is being paid to do and is doing the best she can under the circumstances. There are issues that have to be examined with respect to training, pensions and pay and the Minister should get those sorted as quickly as she can. The gardaí are serving her well.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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Neither I nor Senator Ruane are calling for the Minister to resign. I want to begin by getting the issue of the far right out of the way. It is led by one or two men and the bigger the donkey, the heavier the load. When I came into this House in 2020, I remember the fear out there around the Covid protests and the anti-vaccine protests. I got involved then with the Hope and Courage Collective, which aims to tackle the far right. Senator Ruane spoke earlier about those living in direct provision centres and hotels not being safe.Obviously, my colleague does not mean the people are killing each other; far from it. What she is referring to is what we have just spoken about it, namely, that the policies in place mean it is acceptable in this country in 2023 that there are people, perhaps with five or six children, who call home a little room in a hotel. People are living in poverty and are not getting good-quality education and healthcare. These people are really on the margins of society. We talk about our economy being the best we have seen it. That is the case for some people but not for all. Many people in this country are on the margins and are really struggling. We must address that. Paulo Freire, whom I absolutely love, talked about how oppressed people can, unfortunately, become oppressors. We have seen that in the course of the Donald Trump campaign, with the talk of putting up a wall and that if we give to them, it is taking from us. Unfortunately, when people are living in the pits and have absolutely nothing, they are dependent on what the State gives them, which is buttons when one considers the cost of electricity, looking after children, etc. People are angry that their needs are not being met in this country, and they have a right to be angry about it. People are feeding into that, as we saw last year. Senator Ruane went out to local communities and supported the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, in educating our local communities. When oppressed people become oppressors, it does not make them bad people. When a single mother is walking her child down the street to participate in an anti-refugee protest, it does not make her a racist and a bad person. In my opinion, she is uneducated. People in that situation genuinely believe they will get more if we do not give to foreign people or other people. My message today to ordinary people is that giving refuge to others is the right thing to do. I do not agree with Senator Keogan that the solution is to put them back on an aeroplane. How the hell can we put people back into warzones?

Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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Well said.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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That is not the answer. We need to have an honest conversation and we must tackle the far right.

One of the questions on last night's episode of "The Late Debate" asked how the Garda failed. That failure was the result of the policies and structures we have in place. The Garda did not know what it was doing that night. It was a shock and we were not prepared for it. What would we do if, God forbid, this were to happen again next month? Do we have enough gardaí in place? Have enough gardaí been trained for it? We are living in Ireland in 2023 and what happened last Thursday could have happened anywhere, at any of our children's crèches. Some people took that for granted. I have heard one or two Senators calling those who were involved drug addicts and referring to their actions as thuggery. There were so many people, along with these far-right activists or whatever they like to call themselves. I like to say of them that the bigger the donkey, the heavier the load. They are well organised and we must consider that, going forward, and have serious conversations.

I have a different opinion to some of my colleagues, in that I think we need hate crime legislation as soon as possible. I know a hell of a lot of emails came in because I received some too. There were thousands of those mails before what happened in Gaza. We have been putting that legislation on the back burner and we cannot do that because what will keep minorities safe is people knowing it is unacceptable to attack a person because of their identity. Take, for example, a woman's hijab being pulled from her. If someone pulled the clothes from a white Irish woman on the streets, I guarantee there would be protests up and down this country, saying it is not right. However, it is all right to pull a Muslim woman's hijab from her face in this country.

I do not mean to sound in any way disrespectful or anything, but what we are now doing and a part of is a class war. It is us against them. As Senator Ruane said in the House yesterday, people with nothing are fighting for nothing. We need to consider how we keep migrants, refugees and people from minority groups. As a member of the Traveller community, I know exactly what it is like to live in fear and to be hated in this country. To go back to what Senator Ruane said, it is people with nothing fighting for nothing. That does not mean that Senator Ruane and I are defending this and saying that people should be out on the streets and fighting. Our thoughts are far from that. However, we need to tackle the far right in this country and we need to do it collectively.

Michael McDowell (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister. There are a few things I want to say. It seems there is now a decent Garda presence in Dublin city. I said at a meeting of the justice committee that my business means that I traverse the city up to four times a day, moving from here to there. I see the absence of policing in Dublin. Gardaí are not there. They are not visible. They are not out on the street and where they are, they are not there in sufficient numbers. I am glad that an effort is now being made to increase and boost the presence of gardaí in the streets of Dublin.

There are parts of Dublin where things have happened that one could not imagine happening if there was a real risk of a Garda presence within 100 yards. A young girl was dragged down a lane-way near St. Mary's Abbey. She was, I imagine, about to be killed. She was wrapped up in duct tape and flung under a car when two other girls heard her scream. That happened in the heart of our city.

I saw footage from Ballybrack where grown women in their 40s were screaming abuse at gardaí from 6 in. in front of their faces, calling them this, that and the other. They called them scumbags and were screaming hatred and abuse at gardaí. The Garda Commissioner has agreed that the right of assembly of citizens guaranteed by the Constitution is for peaceful assembly. There is no right to assemble for violence. There is no right to assemble with a view to causing a breach of the public peace. When I see the barricades around these Houses, I ask myself if that is a victory for a group of sinister people who are recruiting gullible, ignorant people to do their dirty work for them. Is it a victory for them that we are now sitting behind a miniature wall of steel?

I agree with Senators Flynn and Ruane, up to a point. I agree that the people who burned a Luas tram and a bus, and who smashed into Foot Locker and Arnotts, are not right-wing ideologues. There is a cohort of right-wing people, or xenophobic and racist people, if you want to call them that. They are not armchair generals; they are sitting in front of their screens and inciting other people to break the law. Those people have to be dealt with. The Minister has said she wants the hate speech law updated to deal with the Internet age, at the very least. I have no problem at all with that. However, once we go down that road, we must consider what British politicians have claimed is hatred, such as chanting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."Is that hatred? You can have your views, one way or the other, as to what it denotes or connotes but the suggestion was made by the British Home Secretary that anybody who said that should be arrested. I want definition in the Minister's proposed legislation on what hatred is or is not. The Minister came in here and said she was told by the Attorney General that to define hatred or offer any definition of it would make prosecutions more difficult. That is not an excuse. It has to mean something; something either is or is not hate speech. It has to be clear to the arresting garda.

In their hate speech legislation, the British took a look at the power of citizen's arrest and they said it does not apply in this case because you would have right-wing people arresting left-wing people and left-wing people arresting right-wing people for hate speech. I implore the Minister to listen to what I am saying and not to give people on the street the right to arrest each other because they suspect them of hate speech. If we can make some progress on that, then the badly-needed reform of our laws on hatred and incitement to hatred can go ahead. The Minister should not try to bulldoze it through the House on the back of the disorder last Thursday.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I thank all Senators for their contributions to this important debate and discussion on what happened last Thursday evening. I join again with colleagues in condemning this barbaric attack on a group of young and innocent schoolchildren and their carer. My wishes and thoughts are with the young girl and her carer, who are still critically ill in hospital. My wishes and thoughts are also with their families, the children who were there and the children who were in hospital and have been sent home, the school, the wider school community, and the many people who have been impacted by this event. I wish them well and wish the injured a recovery, as we all do. I commend, as many Senators have done, the passers-by who intervened. I have no doubt they saved lives. I commend the people who then came to their aid, who medically supported those children and who continue to protect and mind those children and their carer. We are all indebted to them. It is important to acknowledge the work they do day in, day out. As many have said, given the wider discussion we are having, many of those people were not born in this country and we would be lost without them.

I acknowledge that what ensued after that incident was appalling. A small group of people, many of whom were incited online and many of whom were on the scene, incited people to violence and hatred and to sow division in this country, our community and our capital city. They sought to create fear among people. The violence, vandalism, barbarity and attacks that ensued were appalling and something none of us ever thought we would see. Those who are responsible have to be brought to justice. They must be punished and face the full rigours of the law.

We also saw members of An Garda Síochána and our emergency workers, who responded to the scene and the violent scenes later on, respond in an effective, efficient and fast way. People can question afterwards why things were not done better and they will point out how they could have been done better. Things will be done better in the future and I have received an initial report from the Garda Commissioner outlining what happened that afternoon. I will receive a further detailed report and there will be lessons learned. I have no doubt there are things that can and should be done differently if this were to happen again.

I commend members of An Garda Síochána for the way in which they mobilised. We have never seen as many public order units mobilised together in this country. We saw more than 400 gardaí come together to respond to a violent mob, which, within a short time, was contained in a small part of the city centre, although the damage these individuals caused was horrendous. Nevertheless, they were contained in a small area and within a matter of hours, before midnight, what could have escalated into much more violent and potentially deadly scenes was contained and stamped out. I cannot commend members of An Garda Síochána enough. They came from outside the city centre and from all over the country when they were called on. Some gardaí who saw what was happening hopped into their cars and drove to Dublin to support their colleagues. That represents the best of what An Garda Síochána is and does.

We have had a lot of discussion on this. We need to separate what happened and the violent scenes on the night in question from the wider discussions about safety in our city. People were not safe in our city centre on Thursday night when nobody would go near the city centre because it was not safe.

More broadly, I have listened to colleagues in this Chamber, particularly to those who live in the city centre, and I have met community organisations and businesses, not just in Dublin but in Cork, Galway, Limerick, my county and smaller towns and villages. I have heard the concerns people have raised. My colleagues and I have listened to people who do not feel safe in this city, be it members of minority groups, women or people going about their work. It is for this reason that many actions have been taken in recent years and that I am focused on making sure we have as many gardaí as possible. While Covid meant the Garda College was closed to new recruits for two years, we now have a steady flow coming out of the college. Every three months, each new class has been larger and we will have another class by the end of the year. We can see momentum building and more people who want to join the ranks. Some 5,000 people applied in response to the most recent recruitment campaign and the next campaign will start in the new year. I am always told Christmas is not a good time to have a campaign. While there may be a soft launch before then, the campaign will open in the new year and will be complemented by a campaign to attract more members to the Garda Reserve to support the Garda in the work it does.

We have done a lot to try to ensure members are sustained and want to join. We have increased the age limit for applicants, from 35 to 50 years. We have increased by 66% the training allowance which applies to Garda members in the Garda College. We are increasing the retirement age to make sure we keep those who are experienced and want to stay on. We are investing more in technology and equipment and making sure gardaí have the tools, technology and supports for their mental health and well-being, given the types of scenes and incidents they have to respond to and the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis.

We need a greater presence on the ground. We have put in place Operation Citizen, which seeks to ensure we have a high-visibility Garda presence, and supplemented it with €10 million in additional funding to try to make sure we have as visible a presence on the ground as possible. We all know that when people see members of An Garda Síochána it makes them feel safe. Whether anything is going on or not, it is important to have a strong Garda presence. I have listened to shopkeepers and retail workers say we need to do more to protect them from those who rob them and from antisocial behaviour. I have been working with An Garda Síochána and retailers to make sure we can put an operation in place that specifically targets those prolific offenders who are causing so much damage in our city. We have a zero tolerance strategy to protect women who do not feel safe and victims of domestic and sexual violence. There are many actions in that, across many Departments, which have a sole focus and intention to make sure that women, children and anyone who is a victim of domestic or sexual violence, or of any type of assault, will be safe.

A huge amount of work is under way. The Garda budget has increased by almost one quarter in the past three years and will continue to increase. Many of the issues that the representative organisations have raised with me, including industrial relations matters, are being worked through. I want to see those issues resolved because all of this is important to make sure gardaí are supported and confident in the work they do. It is also important that communities are supported. In that regard, I mention the community safety partnerships, which we discussed recently when debating the policing Bill. This is about acknowledging that policing and safety are not just about policing. It is a role for the entire community, including all our services, Departments and agencies, working together and responding collectively to deal with the issues in our society and the communities that need to be lifted up by putting in place the supports and resources that are needed, be they health or educational supports, to ensure nobody is left behind. We need to address the root causes.

I agree with much of what Senator Ruane said, as I always do. There are many people in our society who are marginalised and feel they do not have the same access to supports or education as others. There are many people who are victims but they do not go out and loot, riot and attack members of An Garda Síochána.We have to acknowledge that. Yes, we have to get to the root causes of the challenges we face and what may cause people to do what they do. There are many people who do bad things who are not bad people. However, we cannot - cannot - look at what happened on Thursday and excuse it away. There is absolutely no excuse for it. I also want to say to Senator Keogan that her comments can be very dangerous, and they are dangerous.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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To say that migration, or migrants and crime are connected-----

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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The facts speak for themselves.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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-----is not appropriate. It is not okay-----

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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These are European facts.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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-----and it is very sad to hear that in our Chamber.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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Senator Keogan, please.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I have said it before. These are European facts.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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The Minister is entitled to respond.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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That is wrong, Minister. That is wrong, what you are doing.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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Please. Senator Keogan had the opportunity to make her comments. The Minister has the opportunity to respond. I ask that the Senator allow her to do so without interruption.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I did not speak any untruths.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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You did.

Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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Yes, you did.

Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail)
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The Minister without interruption, please. This has been a respectful debate so far. Do not ruin it in the last few minutes. That is all I am going to ask.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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As public representatives, we all have a duty to know and understand that the words and actions we use have consequences. We saw last week that we are starting to see the spread of hatred and of a small group of people, which is unfortunately starting to grow. They are intent on sowing division and hatred in our society with the sole objective of creating instability and challenging our democracy. As members of this democracy we have an obligation not to feed into that or to be part of it. I ask Senators to look at their words and what they are saying. Our communities are enriched by the people who have come to this country, who are part of our hospitals and schools, and who came to the aid of those children the other day. To equate them or anybody who is an immigrant, or who has sought shelter or refuge in this country, with crime is simply wrong and incorrect. The message we should be sending loudly from this House and from the Dáil Chamber is that we stand in solidarity against those who wish to sow division and hate. Our language in that regard is really important.

I thank colleagues for their contributions. What has happened has shone a light on the way in which we need to collectively stand against those who wish to sow division and create hate in our society. I look forward to working with colleagues in the many ways in which we can push back.

Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail)
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I thank all Members for their contributions. Amendment No. 1 has already been moved and seconded.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I press the amendment.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I move amendment No. 2:

After the final paragraph under “abhors and condemns:”, to insert the following paragraph: “- violence directed towards ethnic minorities and refugees/asylum seekers;”.

Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I second the amendment.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I move amendment No. 4:

After the third paragraph under “praises and acknowledges:”, to insert the following paragraph: “- the expedient restoration of public transport services through the coordinated efforts of Dublin Bus, Luas (Transdev) and Dublin City Council;”.

Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I second the amendment.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I move amendment No. 5:

In the second paragraph under “rejects and denounces, and is disgusted by:”, before “those who caused fear and apprehension”, to insert “the actions of”.

Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I second the amendment.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I move amendment No. 6:

In the third paragraph under “rejects and denounces, and is disgusted by:”, after “mindless violence” to insert “, and violence strategically incited by far right agitators,”.

Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I second the amendment.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I move amendment No. 7:

After the sixth paragraph under “rejects and denounces, and is disgusted by:”, to insert the following paragraph: “- the classist and reactive analyses of last week’s events that have circulated in certain media, including on social media, which have completely failed to take account of the impact of poverty, deprivation and social exclusion on marginalised communities;”.

Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I second the amendment.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I move amendment No. 10:

In the final paragraph under “calls on:”, to delete “and to bring forward such other legislative measures as she may feel are required” and substitute “and to bring forward such other legislative proposals as are evidently required”.

Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I second the amendment.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I move amendment No. 11:

After the final paragraph under “calls on:”, to insert the following paragraph: “- the Government to provide increased investment in community, youth, social and public services to alleviate disenfranchisement, build social cohesion and encourage greater pro-social engagement in our communities.”

Marie Sherlock (Labour)
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I second the amendment.