3 days ago
Councillors Gavin Pepper and Malachy Steenson shout down TD during protest against Citywest Hotel sale
Paul Gogarty, Independent TD for Dublin Mid-West, faced angry criticism from two Dublin City councillors during a protest against the
planned State purchase of Citywest Hotel
in Dublin. The protest took place outside Leinster House on Wednesday.
Mr Gogarty had been addressing a group of protesters objecting to the prospective purchase of the hotel, which is being used to accommodate people seeking international protection.
Speaking after the exchanges, Mr Gogarty said he supported the protesters' right to seek greater consultation from the Government about the purchase.
He outlined that he had opened his remarks with a 'preamble', saying that he did not condone any form of racism or abuse. 'I wasn't allowed to finish my preamble,' he said.
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Mr Gogarty was challenged by at least one protester, as well as by Independent councillors Malachy Steenson and Gavin Pepper.
Mr Pepper told Mr Gogarty that he was 'a disgrace'. Mr Steenson angrily challenged the former Green Party TD, asking him: 'Who are you calling far right?'
Speaking afterwards, Mr Gogarty said that the protesters were entitled to object to the proposed Government plans to purchase the Citywest campus. 'There never is proper consultation with communities,' he said. 'It's always telling people after the event what's happened.'
Mr Pepper told reporters Mr Gogarty was 'putting people down and trying to call them racist and far right, as always. They don't want to hear what the communities have to say.'
'I'm supporting the people that want their hotel back, that's what we're out to support,' Mr Pepper said when it was put to him that he was not a representative for the local area. He is a councillor for the Ballymun-Finglas area.
'I think it's unfair for me to be called far right and an agitator. Do you know what I think it is? It's classism and it punches down on people that want to speak out.'
He accused Mr Gogarty of bringing up race in his comments on Wednesday morning.
Protester Bernie Cronin, a former Fine Gael member who has joined Independent Ireland, said the protest arose out of a public meeting held in recent weeks at the Green Isle Hotel at Newlands Cross, Dublin. That meeting, attended by about 200 people, was held in reaction to Government plans to buy the Citywest Hotel.
Mr Cronin said demonstrators were not objecting against the IPAS centre currently in operation in the hotel, but to the plans for the Government to purchase it, which he believed meant it would never be returned to its original use.
He said he was not a resident of Saggart but lived in Clondalkin, adding that he and other residents had gathered 4,000 signatures from local people opposed to the purchase of the hotel by the State.
He said the protesters were 'non-political' and he had spoken to Mr Gogarty beforehand to encourage him to address the group. He said that organisers of the protest had been concerned about 'outside parties that would hijack what we're trying to do'.
'[Mr Gogarty] stood up and then he launched into [how] he would have no truck if any organisation was in any way anti-immigrants, anti-refugees, anti-Citywest.'
He said that Mr Gogarty was challenged by one resident for these remarks.
'That then brought outside people, non-residents who then jumped in, and then we had mayhem.'
'We had no idea that he was going to come out with that,' he said, adding that he felt Mr Gogarty had made a mistake with his comments.
Asked what he felt about so-called 'outside elements', Mr Cronin said: 'They don't help us.' He said Michael Collins, the Independent Ireland TD who had earlier addressed the protest, spoke without being interrupted.
Susan Murphy, who identified herself as a resident of Saggart, said it was 'not a question about race'.
'It's about space,' she said, adding that amenties and facilities in the area were already stretched. 'If the Government buys Citywest Hotel, they have a free reign to do whatever they want with all the land there, which isn't fair on the residents here. Those other people did not speak for us,' she said.
