Four days after three small children and their heroic carer were violently and horrifically attacked at a primary school in Parnell Square, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions held a vigil in Dublin city centre.
The focus of the event, according to media reports and the ICTU’s own posts on X, was more on politics and the current favourite bogeyman, the ‘far right’, rather than on the victims of the appalling, vicious stabbings which left the whole country reeling.
Amongst those victims are: a 5-year old girl still critically ill in hospital; two other stabbed and injured children; a truly courageous woman, Leanne Flynn Keogh, whose lung was perforated when she tried to stop this monstrous attack, and the other deeply traumatised children and adults in the school and the community who had seen evil unfold in their midst.
Yet the media, along with the government and Opposition, seem determined to move the public’s attention away from the children who were knifed as they left school.
Are their lives not important? Do they not matter? Is the fact that terror and horror and fear was inflicted on an inner-city community not the issue that should be foremost in our minds?
Some of the disgusting classism seen on social media this week would suggest that working-class kids are very far down the pecking order amongst the chattering classes: the people who like to signal their virtue regarding their tolerance of immigration while openly sneering at ‘Anto from the flats’.
Are women and children – stabbed and slashed and wounded women and children – now just collateral damage in the determination to never, ever, allow any debate around the disastrous immigration policies that are creating serious problems across this country?
Is that what the explains the deflection? Is that the reason for what seems like an indecent side-lining of what should surely be a priority: showing empathy and sympathy and reassurance and solidarity to a community while a little girl battles to hold on to life, in critical condition in hospital for five long days now.
So many unanswered questions hang over the stabbings.
Why did this man come to this country and live here and take shelter and support and then become the chief suspect in the attack on these children? Why was he not deported when it was previously ordered? Who helped him stay in the state – the well-funded NGOs who take endless legal cases at the taxpayers cost? How can our children – our 5 year olds – now feel they are safe in school?
Has an Taoiseach been to see the family? Did the Tánaiste go to see the injured in hospital? Did any senior political figure go to speak to parents? We don’t know, because a silence seems to have descended – or is being imposed – on the attack.
Instead we have Leo Varadkar vowing to make sure hate speech laws are enacted, and idiots like Joe Brolly ranting about the ‘far-right’ on Newstalk with some pre-prepared bilge about ‘hate’.
Varadkar and Brolly cannot be seriously imagining that rioters and looters care about hate speech legislation. They must be aware that the ‘far-right’ has no real power or real influence here, and that the real concern for the public is what unfolded at the primary school last Thursday.
(As revealed on Gript yesterday, TDs were told in the Dáil – by people who set themselves up as experts on such things – that the ‘far-right’ in Ireland amounts to a few dozen people).
What is happening at present looks like an exercise in distraction. Terrible violence was perpetrated on children and their carer, but public debate has quickly been moved along to another subject.
These are the same kind of people who attack Gript for reporting facts, because, it seems, they want to be the sole arbitrators of the facts the Irish people need to know.
The vast, vast majority of people believe that people who come here to work should be respected and should feel safe and welcome. But the current issue – the issue that should be under discussion – is whether our immigration policies, in particular our disastrous and much-abused asylum system, have a role to play in school children and women being slashed and stabbed.
This deflection tactic is, of course, particularly harmful not just because it supresses debate on the thorny topic of immigration but because it can be used to silence concerns on any issue.
Gript Media Editor John McGuirk on recent criticism from politicians and other journalists: We don't censor news just because politicians believe the public might think the wrong thing if they heard the facts.#gript pic.twitter.com/PAkt9ZkATS
— gript (@griptmedia) November 28, 2023
RTÉ, for example, is talking up concerns about whether immigrants can feel safe given the events of the past few days. Of course, migrant workers should feel safe, and yes racism is deplorable, but why isn’t the focus at this time on the unprecedented crime that happened at Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire?
Where are the long discussions around ensuring children are not attacked in schools? Why isn’t RTÉ investigating what really motivated Yousef Palani to behead and attack two men in Sligo? Where are the Upfront programmes asking the people if a huge influx of newcomers with no passports being dumped in disadvantaged and rural communities are causing people to feel unsafe?
Ashling Murphy was stabbed eleven times in the neck by Josef Puska, but the media and political establishment decided that anyone who suggests her death should lead to a debate on immigration is a racist and must be shouted down.
They couldn’t shout down Ashling’s beloved boyfriend, Ryan Casey, so when he slammed a system that allowed Puska to come to Ireland country, get social housing, social welfare, not hold down a job of any description and never contribute to society for 10 years, they just censored him instead.
When he added that he felt the country that he and Ashling grew up in had “lost its innocence” and was simply not safe anymore, his remarks were carefully left out of the media reports on his victim statements.
That really was disgusting. They tried to silence the grieving boyfriend of a murdered woman.
And so yesterday, the ICTU and Sinn Féin talked up tackling racism and told us we need ‘an Ireland for All’, as if that was the major issue four days after children were subjected to an unprecedented attack.
Does that ‘All’ include Josef Puska, I wonder? Or Yousef Palani? Does it include an Algerian who slashed children as they made their way out of school on a sunny Thursday in Dublin city centre?
Is our desire to be seen as the most accepting people on the planet making us blind to the dangers of throwing open our borders?
The victims are being ignored. They don’t fit the narrative. The real issue is that children were stabbed, their brave carer was stabbed, and terror was brought to a school in Parnell Square, but the establishment have decided we are only allowed to talk about rioting and looting because discussing the real issue – or the real, life-destroying, devastating consequences of careless policy – isn’t permitted.
Yesterday, one mother posted a powerful message on Facebook saying: “as a parent of Gaelscoil Colaiste Mhuire it seemed scary sending my babies into school this morning. But I know the principal & teachers will do everything in there power to help them.”
However, she added that they were left feeling “forgotten about” after the attacks and that politicians were “not there to help us in these strange times”.
“Our little school has been forgotten about too many times by our government and other departments, even though its in the heart of the city. Our children deserve to feel safe in there surroundings. Schools should be a safe place for them,” she said .
“Not there to help us in these strange times”. What a heartbreaking and saddening post. There seems to be a concerted effort on behalf of the entire establishment to sweep this hideous crime and the trauma of this community under the carpet.
Instead all their attention is on their favourite bogeyman, the far-right: this nebulous entity that is rolled out whenever the liberal left in Ireland want to shut down free speech, or silence women who think a man is someone with a penis, or ask for more taxpayer funds for yet another jobs-for-the-boys organisation ‘tackling’ extremism.
The riots, which were carried by the sort of disaffected teenagers seen running amok in Dublin on a daily basis, have become a handy deflection for a crime that was committed by an Algerian national: the type of crime that has never before been seen in the state and which should not just elicit horror, but provoke a genuine national conversation around immigration.
In the meantime, it is too much to expect our political and media establishment to put aside their agendas for once and focus on showing support and sympathy for that little girl still critically ill, for Leanne Keogh still in a serious condition, and for a traumatised community that needs to be made safe.
And can we then have a genuine, open, and honest discussion on the pressing problems being created by reckless and careless migration policies?