Vivienne Clarke
Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has called on social media companies to “step up” and stop their platforms being used to organise events such as the protest in Dublin last Saturday.
Digital media companies needed to do a lot more, he told Newstalk.
Whether it was bullying, hate speech or allowing their platforms to be used to facilitate efforts to undermine the State, more needed to be done to stop such activities particularly at a time when there were public health concerns, he said.
“These are extraordinarily powerful organisations that make huge sums of money.
"They are welcome in Ireland and we provide a platform for global reach in many ways for many of these platforms but they do have a responsibility as well and the Government needs to work with them to make sure they are following through on that responsibility.”
Mr Coveney said that politicians did not always get things right, but, as elected representatives, they were trying to tell people the truth and to protect people during the pandemic.
“We are, of course, open to criticism and questioning all the time, but some of the conspiracy theories that are being used to inspire hatred and anger and division, we have to call that out for what it is and hope that most right-thinking people reject it out of hand.
“These are people who are trying to recruit, sometimes vulnerable people, but people who are struggling with the pandemic because their businesses are not open, they may be stressed, many people are, this has been a very, very difficult year for so many people – but we have got to close this out now in the next few months.”
Lack of resources
Meanwhile, a member of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), Damien McCarthy has called on the Garda Commissioner and the Minister for Justice to meet with members of the force to discuss the “very serious challenges” and lack of resources for dealing with events such as the protests in Dublin on Saturday.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio, Mr McCarthy said the State cannot allow the situation to spiral out of control and action needed to be taken to ensure that it didn’t happen again.
There was a need for a supplementary budget to ensure the force was adequately resourced and protected on the streets, he said.
Mr McCarthy said there were “obviously significant challenges” for the force and it was important to have the capacity to respond to public order situations at short notice.
It was clear that such action needed to be prioritised, he added.
Mr McCarthy said that there had been very little notice on Saturday about the protest with no notification as there should have been about a public event. “It was quite clear that those that congregated went with the intent of inflicting harm on the Garda Siochana."
