CLAIMS ONLINE THAT gardaí were called to an estate in west Dundalk after a man tried to drag a child off a bike are uncorroborated by any evidence, including gardaí records and local councillors.

A post in the Dundalk Says No Facebook group, which campaigns against asylum seekers in the Co Louth town, says that on the night of 5 August there was “an attempted kidnapping last night in Clann Chullain park estate in Coxes”.

The post was shared more than 60 times at the time of writing.

“The child who is age 10/11 who is a member of the travelling community was on his bike cycling around to his house with his dog as he was cycling a black man tried to drag him off his bike,” the post says.

“The child fell off his bike sideways and managed to run away and raise the alarm, the Gardaí were called to the scene.”

The post goes on to warn readers to be on guard for their children as “mass immigration is allowing in the dirt of the dirt in our communities and this needs to stop before someone is badly hurt or kidnapped”, and asks for “any information about any attacks of possible violence from immigrants” so that they can post it on their page.

However, despite claims that “Gardaí were called to the scene”, as well as a specific time and location being given, the Garda Press Office told The Journal that there was no record of any such incident.

Currently, all calls, radio traffic, and incidents are logged by Gardaí. Incidents, such as an attempted abduction, would be made into entries on the PULSE database, which cannot be deleted. 

Basic information about such entries is regularly made available to journalists. 

Local councillors can also be a vital source of less-formal information, particularly for serious incidents, such as attempted abductions, that occur in their area.

However, councillors for the Dundalk/Carlingford electoral area, where the alleged incident is said to have occured, also told The Journal that they had heard no such reports.

The Journal reached out by email and phone call to every councillor for the area. Two councillors responded – Antoin Watters and John Reilly – with both saying that they had heard of no such incident.

False claims about migrants committing crimes are regularly spread online, often by fringe, conspiracy or anti-immigrant groups.

Most recently, an attack in England by a British-born man was falsely blamed on being by an asylum seeker or other immigrant, prompting days of rioting and violence in England and Northern Ireland, often directed at minority groups.

This year, The Journal has debunked claims that a man charged with weapons offences was not Irish, that a foreign national had brandished a handgun on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, that there was a media blackout on covering crimes by migrants, and that non-white election candidates were criminals or were planning on implementing sharia law.

The clear bias of the page where the Dundalk attempted kidnapping claim was posted and the lack of any corroborating evidence, including any records by Gardaí who were supposedly on the scene, indicate that this is another claim without evidence attempting to justify opposition to immigrants.

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