Tánaiste contacts two councillors over ‘completely unacceptable’ Galway hotel fire comments

Tánaiste Micheál Martin has said he made it “very clear” to two Fianna Fáil councillors that comments they made about an arson attack on a hotel in Galway that was earmarked for asylum seekers were “completely unacceptable”.

Mr Martin, the Fianna Fáil leader, said on Tuesday that he has spoken directly to one of the two Galway county councillors, Noel Thomas, and had endeavoured to contact the other, Seamus Walsh, by phone. He said party headquarters had been in direct contact with Cllr Walsh since then.

Mr Martin said: “I do not agree with what those councillors have said. I take strong issue with the nuance and the implications of what they’ve said. I spoke to Cllr Noel Thomas, and I made that very clear that there can be no implication, no nuance around a criminal attack on a building on a property. And now to be fair, Cllr Thomas was clear to me that he was making no implication.

“But nonetheless, he did make comments to the effect that the attack was as a result of Government policy. I pointed out to him that this has been Government policy over a number of decades now in respect of honouring our obligations under European Union [laws], but also under the Geneva Convention and other international legal frameworks.”

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Mr Martin strongly endorsed the comments of Galway West TD, Éamon Ó Cuív, who has unequivocally condemned the deliberate burning of the Ross Lake House Hotel, which was intended to be used as accommodation for up to 70 men seeking international protection.

“As a deputy, [Mr Ó Cuív] has led very strongly from the front,” he said.

Referring directly to Mr Ó Cuív’s rebuttal of Mr Thomas’ claim that there was “no room at the inn”, Mr Martin said: “There was room at the inn and there was a facility there that was empty and they would have been in a position to take people in.”

He said the comments were “completely unacceptable” and also rejected the implication in comments from the councillors and also some TDs in the Dáil that there is a link between migrants and bad behaviour or criminality.

“That has to be knocked on the head and ruled out. It is [a] completely unacceptable use of language. There is no evidence base to that at all. I really took issue with that implication.”

Asked if the two councillors would be expelled, Mr Martin said there was an internal process within Fianna Fáil to deal with such matters and he was not going to pre-empt it.

Meanwhile, speaking at a public meeting in Fermoy in North Cork over plans to accommodate 56 international protection applicants in a guest house in the centre of town, local Fianna Fáil Cllr William O’Leary said those protesting against the arrival of the asylum seekers were “genuine, decent people and Ireland was going down a very dangerous path when you are branded ‘far right’ if your views differ from those of the establishment”.

Cllr O’Leary said that people might accuse him of hypocrisy in standing with those in Fermoy opposed to more asylum seekers coming to the town given he was a member of a party in Government promoting such a policy, but he would stand by those on the protest.

“My view is that overall immigration into this country is not sustainable at current levels – the last 12 months have been sheer madness and the worrying thing is that there has been a failure by those in Government to acknowledge that there is an issue here,” he said.

Speaking at the same meeting, independent TD Mattie McGrath said the Government should hold a referendum on immigration next year rather than the two scheduled votes to amend the Constitution to change the concept of family and remove a reference to the role of women in the home.

Mr McGrath, who said he wasn’t “anti-immigrant”, said immigration was a far more pressing issue as it had reached “unsustainable levels”.

“We now have two referenda being offered to us before St Patrick’s Day of very little relevance to many people, at least to people I have met – I called for a referendum on immigration ten months ago and there was no mention of it since but that’s the real question to ask the people,” he said.

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