Updated 12.33
A DUBLIN HOTEL has cancelled a planned launch for a new extreme right-wing party which had been set for tomorrow afternoon.
The event was scheduled for 3pm tomorrow at the Merrion Hotel in the south city centre.
The hotel has confirmed to TheJournal.ie that the event will not now be taking place.
“The event is not taking place tomorrow, that is all we can say,” a spokesperson said.
The National Party, a new entity espousing the “true spirit of the Republic” had released details of its planned launch tomorrow at the five-star hotel.
The party’s release says that the key speakers at the launch would have been its president Justin Barrett, a Tipperary man formerly of action groups Youth Defence and the Mother and Child Campaign, and James Reynolds, a former chairman of the Irish Farmers Association in Longford and current national treasurer of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association (ICSA), and proclaimed deputy president of the new party.
Little is known about the new party, although The National Party registered with the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) as a Third Party on 9 August of this year.
Under Irish electoral rules a third party is any individual or group other than a registered political party or candidate who or which accepts a donation exceeding €100 in value in any calendar year. Other such examples in Ireland include Right2Water, Marriage Equality, and the Iona Institute.
The party states that the aim of tomorrow’s event is to inform the public “of the purpose and aims of the National Party”.
The release says that “Ireland’s elites” continue to “‘value signal’ their masters in the increasingly dictatorial Federal European Union by an unrestricted policy of immigration to the point of population displacement”.
The release continues:
That one party, loyal to the Republic and a sovereign people, dedicated to unity by consent, that one party committed to real and sustainable economic growth, that one party which will speak for the great silent majority who have seen the beginnings of “multi-culturalism” with growing dismay, that one party who will represent that so basic of equalities, the equal right to be alive, that party is the National Party.
The announcement got a deal of attention on social media in Ireland last night – the majority of it negative in tone.
It seems unlikely that the Merrion Hotel had been aware of the nature of the planned event.
Situated almost directly across from Government Buildings, the hotel is more renowned for the quality of its service than for political controversy.
A spokesperson for the hotel this morning said that it would not be making any comment at that time, but that management was “in the process of dealing with the situation”.
TheJournal.ie has requested comment on the matter from both James Reynolds and Justin Barrett.
In an attempt to speak to Barrett a call was placed to pro-life organisation Youth Defence with whom he had previously worked. However the spokesperson who replied said they had never heard of Barrett, nor had had any dealings with him.
The National Party, while a heretofore unknown entity, is not the first such right-wing movement to emerge in Ireland in recent years.
Identity Ireland, a similar right-wing anti-immigration group, was formed in 2015.
Allied with controversial European anti-Islam organisation Pegida, its co-founder and chairman Peter O’Loughlin has previously said he and his party “despise” Ireland’s political culture which sees “expert advisers and political gurus all paid handsome amounts of taxpayers’ money to tell politicians how to essentially lie to their own people”.
It has now emerged that Identity Ireland registered as an official political party in Ireland last week, 11 November, meaning that it now has leave to campaign in Dáil elections under its own banner.
O’Loughlin ran as an independent candidate in last February’s general election in the Cork North Central constituency but was eliminated on the second count.
First published 10.31
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say