(LifeSiteNews) — The leader of a Catholic political party in Ireland has spoken out against a series of measures taken by the government, which he claims are making Ireland an international byword for repression.
As the excellent Gript news reports, Peader Tóibín spoke out in the Irish parliament to denounce laws which disgrace the nation.
He said that the Government ‘is pushing Ireland into an outlier position. Internationally Ireland is gaining notoriety right across the world for the authoritarian streak that is happening here.’
Tóibín hammers the increasing authoritarianism of this draconian Government who are now regularly deleting the democratic rights of the people. pic.twitter.com/wBTeqzsHaO
— Aontú (@AontuIE) July 12, 2023
His words come in response to a raft of measures recently introduced to restrict free speech and criminalize Catholic prayer in public, which he describes as an attack on democracy itself.
Draconian Parliament
Speaking of the Irish Parliament, he said “This Dáil is the most draconian Dáil in generations.”
He warns that the Irish Government is now criminalizing dissent with new “hate speech” laws.
The Government is trying to implement the hate speech Bill that censors people’s views.
The Government has produced a Bill under which a person can be sent to jail for speaking. The Government is looking to criminalize citizens who speak respectfully on issues that they disagree with, which is the opposite of what a liberal democracy means.
The bill is dangerously imprecise and its terms cannot be clearly explained – even by its authors.
That Bill is so poorly worded and no one, not even the Minister who wrote the Bill, is sure of exactly what the definition is and how the act will land people in jail.
This ambiguity extends to the very issues which may see Irish people prosecuted for noticing basic facts about reality online.
This can perhaps be best evidenced by Ireland’s homosexual prime minister, Leo Varadkar, who recently conceded that he cannot say how many “genders” there are.
Banning Catholic prayer
Yet speech is not the only thing to be criminalized in Ireland. Tóibín adduces the banning of prayer outside abortion centers, which has effectively created “prayer free zones” across Ireland.
His argument is an indictment of the corrupted morality of a state whose celebration of the destruction of unborn life trivializes the freedoms of those who survive.
If a government such as this one is willing to delete the right to life of tens of thousands of the most vulnerable living human beings, deleting the right to protest and the right the right to free speech is not an incredible jump for it.
A ‘political cartel’
Tóibín claims the political situation in Ireland is like a one-party state, as the putative opposition simply complies with the most extreme measures proposed by the coalition government.
I believe one of the reasons that Ireland has become so authoritarian in recent years is that the Government and the so-called Opposition are simply on the same page on many issues.
Today on a rake of issues there is hardly a cigarette paper between the Government, Sinn Féin and the Trotskyite hard-left parties on many issues.
To many people this feels stifling. To many people this feels like a political cartel. Aontú is the only political party in this country pushing back against this oppressive uniformity that is happening.
Tóibín marks a wider political crisis in the country, whose drift towards a consensus of authoritarianism he traces to the measures introduced as a response to COVID-19.
He notes that the extreme measures taken to enforce policies such as lockdown and mask wearing were as severe as they were irrational.
During the COVID crisis we saw another example of the authoritarian nature of the Government. The Government created two tiers of freedom.
People were free to go about their business if they had a COVID pass but were restricted from public spaces if they did not, despite the fact that both cohorts were getting COVID and spreading COVID at the same time.
The attachment of unreason to extreme government behaviors has set a dangerous precedent, both in Ireland and in the wider world.
A history of dissent
Toibin and his party are no strangers to dissent. The Aontu leader’s own party has form in making the very kind of objections to the official narrative which are threatened with criminal proceedings under the new censorship regime.
Toibin defended the “right to a personal view” of his then deputy leader Anne McCloskey, who in 2020 criticized the use and efficacy of masks during the COVID lockdowns.
McCloskey, a former medical doctor, said the use of masks was “like using a sheep fence to keep out mosquitos.”
She was widely criticized for speaking out, and was contacted by the U.K.’s General Medical Council over her remarks. Rather than submit to this pressure, she restated her view, criticizing the creation of a climate of fear.
“I am not in COVID-denial, but I have seen no evidence yet that face coverings are in any way helpful to prevent the spread,” she said. “But we have created a state of terror in the community which is counter-productive.”
A committed Catholic
Peadar Tóibín leads the minority party Aontu (“Unity”) and holds their only seat in the Irish Parliament, the Dail.
His party, once described as “Catholic-conservative,” campaigns in both Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland, and has a strong anti-abortion stance combined with a socially conservative Irish republican platform.
He has spoken in the past of his Catholic faith, and how it inspires his political work – as well as his wider life.
“It’s important that faith can have full and clear expression in the public forum,” he said in an interview with The Irish Catholic in 2020, before noting how opposition has grown to Catholic teaching in political life.
I do believe we’re living in a society which has become extremely intolerant to the faith.
Tóibín argues that a kind of moral inversion has taken place, with disordered lifestyles now promoted, and their former taboo status now attached to Catholicism.
Many people of faith feel that they nearly have to live in the closet.
I think it’s a shocking part of the rigidity and uniformity of modern society that we’ve taken some people out of the closet only to put another group of people into the closet.
Tóibín quit Sinn Fein to found his own movement in 2019, as the one time Irish Republican party transformed itself into a progressive platform celebrating abortion and LGBTQ+ “rights.”
His faith has clearly inspired him to become a leading critic of his nation’s rapid acceleration into a state of Godless tyranny. His warning to the Justice Minister of Ireland is one which could equally apply to many others across the western Liberal consensus: “Unless the Minister reverses the direction in which he is going, future generations will look back on his actions with horror.”