Sir, – The riot in Dublin in November 2023 was a warning to Government that preventative action is needed to ensure a fair and socially cohesive society. The violence and intimidation on display in Saggart is testament to the failure of the Government to act (“It was absolute mayhem,” October 23rd).
We believe there are four key arenas of State failure which create the conditions for occurrences such as in Saggart last week.
First, the failure of the State to invest adequately in local communities in the areas of housing, public transport and healthcare.
As repeatedly noted by Social Justice Ireland, poverty, homelessness, income inequality and the cost of living remain stubbornly high.
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Rural and urban working-class areas are especially badly hit by State underinvestment. Ireland’s housing crisis, in particular, has been weaponised by the far right to whip up racism.
Second, the State has persisted in implementing an inadequate asylum reception policy, with the discredited direct provision system at its heart. Despite recommendations from the Catherine Day Report five years ago to abolish it, the Government has abandoned this goal.
This has led to an ad hoc and inhumane reception policy, while increasingly coercive asylum control measures have hurriedly been introduced. Additionally, Government and other politicians are inflaming the situation by using harsh and unhelpful discourse on international protection.
Third, riots, such as those in Saggart, are organised and prompted by hate speech and far right misinformation spread online, often by transnational actors seeking to further their own ideological agendas.
Studies have shown that younger people with low levels of trust in State institutions and the media are susceptible to this type of discourse.
Yet the Government has not done enough to discipline social media companies or criminalise cases of hate speech. As a result, and worsened by the advent of artificial intelligence, we have a tech-fuelled crisis in public communication.
Finally, hate speech and the violent consequences that stem from it, are occurring in Ireland in an unattended context of structural racism. The social infrastructure to tackle racism and initiatives such as the national action plan against racism remain very poorly implemented and funded.
Action is urgently needed in these areas if the root causes of toxic, anti-immigration violence are to be addressed. – Yours, etc,
Dr BARRY CANNON,
Dr NESSA NÍ CHASAIDE,
Centre for the Study of Politics,
Department of Sociology,
Maynooth University.
