Maeve Higgins: Young activist willing to go to jail in her fight to save the planet

'What the Government is doing now is killing people with its inaction, and challenging that is right, and it is just. And if that means getting arrested, that’s neither a good or a bad thing'

Orla Murphy with fellow Extintion Rebellion activist Zac Lumley outside the Criminal Courts of Justice with other supporters where they appeared in relation to an alleged paint attack on the Department of Foreign Affairs. Picture: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

At 21 years old, with multiple arrests and court appearances, and five weeks in prison behind her, Orla Murphy’s life is different from the one she had imagined for herself growing up in Whitechurch, Cork. 

“I’m from a middle-class family, my dad is a dairy farmer, and my mam is a nurse. I don’t think I even know anyone who has been arrested before.”