At first meeting after riots, Dublin city councillors voiced support for migrants, ethnic minorities, and LGBTQ+ people

Both the stabbings of the children and their carer at the school on Parnell Square, and the ensuing riots “absolutely disgusted all of us in this chamber”, Lord Mayor Daithí de Róiste, of Fianna Fáil, said at Dublin City Council’s first full meeting since the events.

The rioters – far-right, opportunistic, or both – who burned and looted the city on 23 November represent the worst of humanity, said councillors from a range of parties. Many came from outside the area to cause havoc, they said.

“The people who chose to orchestrate the violence that night, they did not have those children’s interest,” said Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan. “Shame on those people.”

Said Fine Gael Councillor Ray McAdam: “What happened on our streets in the inner-city does not represent the people or the communities of the north inner-city, they do not represent Dublin.”

Several also called for support for migrants and ethnic minorities living in the city, who they said were afraid for their safety given the racist, anti-immigrant aspects to the riots.

Of the north-inner city local electoral area’s residents, 47 percent were born outside of Ireland, according to 2022 census figures. For the whole of the Dublin City Council area, that figure is 27 percent.

“The fear among those communities is huge,” said Green Party Councillor Janet Horner. “We have children not turning up for school. We have people scared to walk home after they finish their shifts.”

“There’s a huge, massive, long-term job there to restore trust particularly within those new communities and that is urgently important for us to do. It has always been urgent, it’s been urgent for a long time, but it is really really imperative now,” she said.

There have been regular racist attacks in the city for years, and victims have called for more support from Gardaí. A report last year highlighted sinking levels of trust among those who’ve been attacked that the Gardaí would do anything to help.

Also at the meeting, council managers outlined their efforts to quickly bring order back to the north inner-city to make the Christmas shopping season a success for traders there, given the importance of the coming weeks for their financial health.

And elected members effusively praised and thanked emergency services workers for their response to both the stabbings and the riots, and council managers and in-house council staff for their quick clean-up after the riots.

Council plans

Since the riots council managers have been meeting with representatives of the city-centre business community to figure out what they could do to help make the rest of the Christmas shopping season as successful as possible, said council chief executive Richard Shakespeare.

The business community lost a lot of trade, especially around “Black Friday”, said the council’s director of services, Karl Mitchell. Usually a huge day for sales, it was the day after the riots this year.

At the moment, the council’s efforts include “an enhanced cleansing regime” largely focused on the north inner-city, “and that’s shifts across the 24-hour cycle” until the end of the year, Shakespeare said.

“We’ve also appropriated a team from housing maintenance, to basically work on the lamp posts, all the bits and pieces, the sticker removal, there’s a painting team, the public lighting is being looked at,” he said.

“Public domain have a rapid response team now, which is going after the sticker removal the bin washing, all of those things that just give comfort to people that I think a more cared city is in all likelihood would be considered to be a safer city,” he said.

They’ve also done things like bringing in roaming music sessions to the city centre, and put up the winter lights projections of images onto buildings in the area, he said.

Meanwhile, the council has established a “sustainable city” internal working group, led by Mitchell, which will keep working for the next six to 12 months, Shakespeare said.

Said Mitchell: “It’s all about being happy in the city, feeling a sense of safety, and then being allowed to go about what they’d normally do at this time of year in the city centre.”

“We’ve a number of different constituent audiences: we’ve got families, we’ve got shoppers, we need to support the night-time economy, that’s been badly hit,” he said.

“What we’re going to do now is about getting more outdoor activation. The idea of music, the idea of light, the idea of fun fair, that type of thing, you’re going to see ramped up a good bit between now and Christmas,” he said.

“It’s not just for Christmas, we know there are wider issues that have to be looked at beyond Christmas,” he said.

Doolan, the Sinn Féin councillor, said that, “While we’re focusing on businesses let’s also remember the communities that were left absolutely terrified and petrified by that violence.”

“Particularly those people who are new arrivals to our shore, and I’ll call it what it is, others may be uncomfortable, Black people, Brown people, the Roma community,” Doolan said.

“We need to reach out to those communities and work with those communities with the same focus and level of interest as we’re working to give a hand to the businesses,” he said.

Back in 2021, Dublin City Council was drawing up a new integration strategy, for 2021–2025, but it still hasn’t finished that and put it in place – blaming the central government for the delay. Meanwhile, the council’s north-east inner-city intercultural development coordinator, Joy Eniola no longer works there.

“This really should serve as a reckoning for us as a council that this integration piece needs to start and we should really take it very very seriously,” said Labour Councillor Deborah Byrne.

A lot of migrants can vote in local elections in Ireland but not in Dáil or European ones, Social Democrats Councillor Catherine Stocker said.

“We are the only political voice that many migrants have,” she said. “I would encourage all my fellow members to take that to heart and to be their voice in this time.”

Several councillors called for an enhanced Garda presence on the streets, not just in the city centre, not just now – but going forward.

“The lack of visible policing has been a constant,” said independent Councillor Cieran Perry, chair of the Cabra-Glasnevin joint policing committee. “Garda management are letting down their own members, but much more importantly they’re letting down communities.”

Backing librarians

Apparently coincidentally, a motion that Green Party Councillor Michael Pidgeon had put in months ago, also related to the far right, made its way to the top of the long list of motions pending from different councillors and onto the agenda Monday.

Pidgeon said he put the motion in before the summer’s anti-immigration protests, and before November’s riot, but the issue was “in some ways a precursor to it”.

Far right activists had been targeting libraries because they were stocking material about the lives and experiences of LGBT people, he said.

He expected that librarians in Dublin city would also face pressure, and wanted to show support for them, he said.

The motion – which the chamber backed on Monday – said the council supports libraries in “their rightful provision of LGBTQ+ community supportive literature and related educational material in libraries”.

“No library worker should have to deal with harassment or threats: this Council stands in support with them, and in opposition to hateful, homophobic and transphobic protests that we have seen at Irish libraries in recent months,” it said.

“Libraries must be safe, inclusive and supportive services for Dublin’s diverse communities, and through their provision of knowledge counteract prejudice,” it said.

On Monday at the meeting, Pidgeon said: “It’s just kind of a two fingers to the far right.”

Sinn Féin Councillor Larry O’Toole said he “fully” supported this motion. The attacks on the libraries “was a warning sign of what these people are like”, he said.

“Going in and interfering in where people work, going in and interfering with library staff, going in and interfering with library users because of their hatred and their bigotry,” O’Toole said.

Social Democrats Councillor Cat O’Driscoll said the threat to Dublin city libraries was not just theoretical. “There has been small instances of intimidation at some of our libraries and that’s something we need to stamp out,” she said.

In fact, said Labour Councillor Dermot Lacey said that just before the meeting he’d had a call that a leaflet was circulating around the Dublin South Central area targeting libraries.

Right to Change Councillor Pat Dunne said, “The far right is a term that’s been thrown around without people necessarily knowing what it means. The far right are fascists, they’re racists, they’re homophobic, they’re conspiracy theorists.”

“We have to do everything in our power to stop them from rising as a movement in this country,” he said.