Hearing the news last week that the State media regulator and Gardaí had partnered to produce an “online safety” pack to guide candidates through the election campaign, I didn’t immediately leap to the conclusion I’ve now drawn that an exceptional Irish safetyism threatens to strangle public life, and is therefore damaging social cohesion as never before.
No, that wasn’t my immediate conclusion upon hearing about the pack. After all, while not standard practice, it’s certainly not unheard of – for one, security guidance was issued ahead of the elections in the UK earlier this year, as it has been for some years now (although it could be argued, in light of the murders of Jo Cox and David Amess, that modern politics is a substantially more dangerous affair there than here).
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