GARDAÍ ARE liaising with the organisers of a university debate involving controversial right-wing historian David Irving and are putting in place a policing plan to enable the debate to take place, a senior officer has confirmed.
Supt Mick Finn of Anglesea Street Garda station in Cork said gardaí had been in touch with members of the Philosophical Society at University College Cork (UCC) and were advising them on the steps to take regarding Mr Irving's attendance at a debate.
Mr Irving has been invited by the society to speak in favour of the proposition "that this house believes free speech should be free from restraint" next Monday night at a venue yet to be announced in Cork city.
The society previously invited Mr Irving to speak in UCC in November 1999, but the lecture was cancelled after gardaí advised college security they feared for people's safety when some 600 protesters gathered and some of them rushed a Garda cordon.
However, auditor of the college society Ross Frenett said it was determined to go ahead with the debate despite receiving abusive messages, saying he believed those opposed were "a vocal minority".
Mr Frenett said the Philosophical Society had decided to invite Mr Irving to speak on the subject of free speech as he had personal experience of his freedom of expression being restricted. He strongly denied the invite was a publicity stunt by the society.
"It is not a publicity stunt. We have not issued any press release and, other than a small poster on our website, we have not advertised in any way.
"The fact that there is such a huge outcry and that we have been threatened seems to us to highlight the need for such a debate on free speech. We are taking the threats seriously but we are not going to allow ourselves be bullied and the debate will go ahead."
However, Socialist Party councillor Mick Barry said to invite Mr Irving was a mistake and that a campaign had already been launched by socialists, anarchists and trade unionists in Cork to stop him from speaking at UCC.
Cllr Barry said Mr Irving was a convicted Holocaust denier who was jailed in Austria in 2006 for minimising the Holocaust, while he had also been described by a high court judge in the UK in a failed libel action as "anti-Semitic and racist".