Frightening to see how clever the far-right reaction to the picking of the Dublin Rose is

Suad Mooge represents a new kind of Rose for a new kind of Ireland — and a threat to the far right revisionists who want to drag us back to the past

Dublin Rose Suad Mooge: She is is the first to elevate the contest simply by her presence, her vincibility, her job and her cultural breadth.

It’s difficult to grasp the notion of the Rose of Tralee as offering an opportunity to racists to create a controversy around a regional winner, but that’s the reality. And what’s most frightening about the far-right reaction to the recent picking of the Dublin Rose is how clever some of it is.

Take the guy on YouTube who has almost 60,000 followers. He’s so good-humouredly reasonable about the whole thing, it would be easy to be seduced by him.