O’Rourke reveals entrenched racist attitudes here

REMARKS by Senator Mary O’Rourke that her campaign team “worked like blacks” (Irish Examiner, January 9) reveal how entrenched racist attitudes are in Fianna Fáil and the wider republican tradition to which it is aligned.

It wouldn’t be so bad if this was an isolated incident or the utterances of just one individual, but it keeps happening again and again.

In Cork, a Fianna Fáil TD blamed that city’s woefully inadequate stock of sub-standard council housing on asylum seekers rather than his party’s rubbish housing policies and in Newtonabbey, an SDLP councillor (basically the Northern Ireland division of Fianna Fáil) says his constituents are treated “like niggers”.