Taoiseach says protesters linked to arson attacks
SOME of the people who protested against planned refugee accommodation centres are likely linked to arson attacks on such buildings, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.
In the Dáil yesterday, Mr Varadkar said gardaí expect to bring prosecutions in relation to the arson attacks.
He said people needed to be convicted for the crimes, adding: ‘It is deeply ironic that people who oppose migration, who connect migration with criminal activity, are indeed the criminals themselves carrying out the very serious crime of arson. While I think many protesters may very well be decent and good people, I don’t believe protesters who spent the entire day and the entire night outside a building didn’t see anything before the building burned down. And they need to be held accountable for their silence and complicitness, in my view.’
Mr Varadkar was responding to Labour leader Ivana Bacik, who said more than 20 properties across the country have been severely damaged in arson attacks after being identified, occasionally incorrectly, as selected to accommodate asylum seekers.
The Labour Party described the arson attacks as a form of domestic terrorism.
Ten people have been arrested in relation to such incidents in recent months, according to the Garda press office. Five people have been arrested in respect of the investigation into criminal damage and public order incidents on Dublin’s Sandwith Street on May 12, 2023, and a file is currently with the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Two people have been charged before the District Court in Kerry in relation to alleged criminal damage to a residential building in Killarney on January 1. Also, there have been four searches carried out by gardaí investigating criminal damage to the Ross Lake House Hotel in Co. Galway.
Last week, Integration Minister Roderic O’Gorman said it was ‘nothing short of a miracle’ that no one has been injured or worse in the arson incidents.
‘It is hugely important that we see the full force of the law applied to people who are undertaking these attacks,’ he said.