A professor at Maynooth University has called for funding to be withdrawn from Mayo County Council after the council passed a motion which called for staff to stop co-operating with the government on asylum housing unless an agreed strategy was put in place.
He also said over the weekend that he wants to see Gript off the air”.
John O’Brennan, who is a Professor at the Department of Sociology at Maynooth University and Director of the Maynooth Centre for European and Eurasian Studies said in the aftermath of the vote that “we need to entirely withdraw funding from Mayo County Council” in a tweet shared to X.
“And FF and FG need to start expelling their members,” Prof O’Brennan wrote, adding: “Shame on all of them for taking a turn to the far right.”
We need to entirely withdraw funding from Mayo County Council.
And FF and FG need to start expelling their members.
Shame on all of them for taking a turn to the far right.
— John O’Brennan (@JohnOBrennan2) January 16, 2024
Mr O’Brennan is a regular contributor to national and international media outlets on European Union issues, and also holds the Jean Monnet Chair in European Integration. He is the Director of the Maynooth Centre for European and Eurasian Studies, and previously lectured in European Union Politics at the University of Limerick.
His call for funding to be scrapped follows the passing of a motion on Tuesday which called on staff to cease cooperating with the Department of Integration regarding the housing of asylum seekers. Councillors have demanded that an “agreed strategy” be put in place when it comes to housing IPAS applicants.
At this week’s meeting of the Council, a cross-party motion which stated that ‘all co-operation ceases immediately, between the staff of Mayo County Council and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth of Ireland, until such time as an agreed strategy is put in place to properly coordinate the provision of additional services for the communities hosting refugees and international protection applicants’, which was approved.
They have also requested that contracts yet to be taken up are put on pause.
One Fine Gael Councillor in the area told Newstalk that councillors wanted the government to listen, adding that the last thing that was needed was “social discord.”
Cllr Peter Flynn told the radio programme: “We don’t know what the implications are, but it certainly will make the job of government that bit more difficult when it comes to Mayo.
“I would hope that it’s not just Mayo that the Government looks at, it’s the entire country. To figure out, how do we do this best?
“The last thing we need as a country is social discord amongst our people, be they residents or be they refugees into our country.”
“Migration has played a huge role in the success of Ireland over the last 20 years. No one is doubting that, and we want to continue to see that in the future. But we don’t want to see a situation where residents are going to start pointing fingers at refugees because our tourism industry is starting to suffer, or because our critical services begin to fail,” he continued.
“We’re getting close to the brink of that, and we really want to avoid that.”
Prof O’Brennan’s social media post has gained significant traction on X, with one commentator weighing in by saying the academic was “misappropriating ‘far-right’” to “a wide spectrum of voters.”
https://twitter.com/brianlenehan/status/1747517851445928333?s=20
Others described it as an “alarming” take on the situation, while one commentator said that “investigation and analysis” was called for regarding the Council’s unanimous vote to urge non-compliance with the government.
“At this stage we should just suspend elections and make John the Emperor of Ireland,” political commentator Robert Burke wrote, while many of the replies said the comments underlined an “authoritarian” mindset that undermined democracy.
On Saturday, O’Brennan also found himself embroiled in controversy on social media after he tweeted that “populist ‘media’ outlets need to be taken off the air as a matter of urgency.”
These populist ‘media’ outlets need to be taken off the air as a matter of urgency. In Ireland Gript falls into the same category.
They are – literally – helping cannibalise democracy by parasitically attaching themselves to democracy. Enough. https://t.co/eWQ1xWKQCJ
— John O’Brennan (@JohnOBrennan2) January 13, 2024
The academic’s comments were described as “short-sighted,” with some agreeing that he was effectively calling for the “cancellation” of some journalists.
In November, Mr O’Brennan published a piece in The Irish Examiner which claimed that the “rise of the far-right is a real concern for democracy.”
He cited the success of Geert Wilders in the Dutch elections, which he said was “not a shock,” adding that right-wing parties “are polling at 20% in 15 EU States and are a major threat to Europe.”
He said that the support for “far right parties,” which he said was at the highest aggregate level since the 1930s, was “something that should set alarm bells ringing around Europe” in advance of June’s European Parliament elections.