Patrice Johnson, a candidate for the Irish Freedom Party in Drogheda, says that online abuse won’t stop her from standing in the election after a video she posted was met with personalised attacks, including repeated references to her being mother to five children.
Ms Johnson, who is standing in the Drogheda Rural LEA said that her motivation for standing in the election for the most part because she believed that the government was failing to put the Irish people first, and she was concerned for the future being shaped for her children.
She said that it should be possible to disagree strongly in regard to political opinions without descending into personal abuse. “A candidate from rival political party came to my door last week, and we had a polite conversation where we disagreed on some issues, and wished each other well,” she said. “That’s how it should be. You can disagree on issues without being horrible to each other.
The IFP candidate said that people get very abusive online. “For the most part, I ignore it but they shouldn’t come after your kids,” she said. “But it won’t stop me standing because I feel so strongly about the issues.”
“It’s usually anonymous accounts online, though I was canvassing in Clogherhead and I was told to take a walk off the pier, and one man spat at me in Drogheda when I was canvassing, and told me I was racist. But I’ve learned there is no point in engaging with the odd person who behaves like that, especially because they can get quite aggressive,” she said.
She said that she had learned to ignore the personalised attacks online, but that it was obvious “that some of them feel that the best way to come after you is to attack you for having five children and to stay nasty things about them and try to upset you that way which is pretty disgusting,” she said.
“They are trying to get to me, because they know that for any parent our kids are the most important thing in the world to us, but I look at my kid’s faces and I shrug it off,” she said. “They’re not involved in politics, I am. As a mam you’d be worried about what is happening to society, and I feel that you stand up for what you believe.”
“I love my kids, and its very important to me that they are raised to be good people who care about others. “My mam is blind and the children are so good to her, they make me very proud. They’ve learned a lot from it, it’s made them more aware of the rights of people with disabilities or people who are vulnerable,” Ms Johnson said.
We need new faces in the local council, we need people that will work for Irish families to come first.
We need voices that will be opposing ipas centres opening up in the area.
It's 2024 no Irish person should be sleeping on the street while Muhammad gets a 3 bed house.
On… pic.twitter.com/mtrD9bybLM
— Patrice Johnson 🇮🇪 (@patricej36) May 9, 2024
Ms Johnson’s most recent video was the target of some online abuse – as well as criticism of her remark that: “It’s 2024 no Irish person should be sleeping on the street while Muhammed gets a 3 bed house”.
Some critics described the remark as “racist” and pointed to the number of workers from abroad providing essential healthcare services.
“To me mass immigration means no housing, no chance for young people to move out of home and make their own lives,” Ms Johnson said. “I’d argue that Irish families are not being looked after in the same way: no planning permission needed for modular homes, also I know cases where families who’ve come here from abroad get houses within a short period of time and Irish families are on the housing list for years.”
She pointed to the recent case of a family of five from Bangladesh who had been were given their own apartment in Co. Westmeath only hours after arriving in the State, and said that the government could not expect Irish people to consider this fair.
Ms Johnson rejected charges of stereotyping and said that government parties had indulged in that: “It’s kind of funny that Maria Walsh said Irish politicians were male, pale, and stale, when everyone seems to want a change for completely different reasons. People feel no one is listening to them.
“Look at the Drogheda Hotel: it turns out the fire cert was not for 500 people, as Fergus O’Dowd has said, but we were called racists for saying that. We’re left now without a major hotel,” she said.