Verona Murphy comments 'astonishing and extraordinary', says Micheál Martin
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said that health and housing are the main issues being brought up on the door step rather than immigration while canvassing in the four byelections.
He told Newstalk Breakfast that he thought some politicians were “playing the race card” because they think it will work in their favour and they were doing it by using comments like “we have to house our own.”
“That’s dangerous talk,” he said.
Fine Gael “are talking out of both sides of their mouth”, but they are “not in the same league as Noel Grealish” who had come into the Dáil in a premeditated fashion with “loaded points that were not factually correct.”
Mr Martin described comments by Fine Gael’s candidate in Wexford, Verona Murphy as “astonishing and extraordinary”.
When asked if he thought the people Ms Murphy visited in direct provision were “being used”, he said yes and he wanted full details and clarity about how the visit was organised at such short notice.
Her comments had been tantamount to “incitement”, he added.
He denied that he was “holding fire” in his comments because of the controversy about tweets posted by Fianna Fáil’s by-election candidate Lorraine Clifford-Lee.
Her tweets had been wrong, he said, but they had been made years ago before she became involved in electoral politics.
On the door step health and housing were the main issues being mentioned, but in some parts of Dublin concerns had been expressed about lack of garda resources and the growing incidents of open drug use on the streets and on public transport.
