Our feature interview with our friend Fatima Gunning from Ireland. She's going to tell us about a civil uprising, really a populist uprising against globalism and mass migration. In one case, it turned into a mini riot. She'll give us the details on that.
00:05:32.620So far, like, obviously, it's early stages, but he hasn't done anything radical.
00:05:36.620I mean, one of the things he's done that a lot of people thought was controversial is that he kept on Helen McEntee as minister for justice.
00:05:42.900She is a deeply unpopular minister for justice who has presided over, well, the chaos we see with immigration today.
00:05:51.640I mean, just was it two years ago, she gave an amnesty to 17,000 illegal immigrants here.
00:05:58.020That might not sound like a huge number to folks in Canada, because obviously you're much bigger than us.
00:06:02.540But to us, that's quite a chunk of people.
00:06:04.320So that was something that some political commentators have said was possibly an unwise decision for him.
00:06:12.960And, you know, he hasn't given really any signs that he's going to shake things up.
00:06:17.460I just remember from 2011, he's quite a young guy.
00:06:24.020He promised the Irish public that he was pro-life and that he was completely against abortion.
00:06:30.360And, you know, a lot of pro-life people in Ireland would have voted for him.
00:06:34.780But he was he also oversaw the introduction of abortion as minister for health.
00:06:38.860So I think he he's a little bit of a shapeshifter.
00:06:42.700I think he does where he he follows where the power is, perhaps.
00:06:47.000Yeah, what's interesting to me is that in the backdrop of all this were two referendum questions that were striking in the difference between the government and the people.
00:07:00.420The most astonishing one was a plan to remove the clause from the Irish Constitution that talks about motherhood.
00:07:08.380And I remember first reading that and it was it's such a unique and interesting part of a national constitution that praises mothers and defends mothers.
00:07:22.500And the idea of removing such a thing is such a an appalling lack of judgment and just a total thumping by the people.
00:07:31.820I mean, all the political class was for these changes and the people were against it.
00:07:37.440What a great divide has the government and has Simon Harris sort of abandoned some of that social engineering stuff.
00:07:45.080You mentioned he's wobbly on on certain cultural issues.
00:07:49.880How is he on the feminist stuff, on the transgenderism stuff?
00:07:54.200Is he still barreling ahead like Leo Varadkar was or has he cooled it on that as the referendum cooled him off?
00:08:00.380Well, I think it's it's almost a little bit too early to tell.
00:08:04.640He's only been in office for three weeks now or a month.
00:08:07.240But I can say that at one stage he did have he him pronouns in his bio on LinkedIn, I think it was.
00:08:13.040So if that's any indicator, I'm sure he's not like he's not too questioning of the transgender ideology stuff.
00:08:21.820He has said that he was he's going to go ahead with the hate speech bill.
00:08:26.760I think I may have spoken to you about that a little bit previously, but that is an extremely controversial piece of legislation.
00:08:33.480And he was interim minister for justice for a short time while the current minister for justice, Helen McEntee, was on maternity leave.
00:08:41.240And he wanted to actually add migration status as a protected characteristic under that bill, which means essentially that it would be a crime to criticize or question somebody.
00:08:53.700Are you an illegal immigrant or something like that?
00:08:55.620He actually wanted to add that to the legislation, which is a bit crazy, isn't it?
00:09:06.600You know, it's I'm glad you mentioned the justice minister, because we've talked to you and some of your colleagues before about the zeal with which the government has pushed this censorship bill.
00:09:16.120And just across the sea in Scotland, Hamza Youssef, who's the first minister of Scotland, he really personally championed an incredible censorship bill that's similar to the one they're talking about in Ireland.
00:09:31.660And I think it backfired on Hamza Youssef in Scotland the first week.
00:09:38.060There were thousands of complaints against him personally.
00:09:41.680I think it was a deeply unpopular bill, and it may have been one of the reasons that he stepped down recently.
00:09:49.640Do you think that you mentioned that the new PM, Simon Harris, is keeping the justice minister who has promoted this censorship bill.
00:10:16.520And there's been such a tremendous amount of pushback against it that, I mean, if I was in his shoes, I would think it was a stupid thing to pursue.
00:10:23.460Honestly, like, you want to make yourself even more unpopular.
00:10:25.900But, you know, I guess, is it a matter of pride that they don't want to see to be, what would you say, kind of bowing to what they would probably call people who oppose it the far right?
00:10:38.880Because they just basically call everyone that doesn't agree with them far right now.
00:10:44.940It's one of the things I see, the similarities in all these countries that I love to follow, and I love to see them through the eyes of gripped.
00:10:51.540You mentioned one of the things that was done was the granting of an amnesty to 17,000 illegal migrants, I think you said.
00:11:03.060And in my head, I did the math, and I think that would be like 100,000 or about 130,000 people in Canada.
00:11:09.780That's an astonishing number of people.
00:11:12.540And I think it's become a flashpoint because the places in Ireland where many of these migrants are being housed are so disruptive.
00:11:22.840I mean, the great number of people who are being put in small towns is astonishing to me.
00:11:27.840And there's a fairly small town called Newton Mount Kennedy, if I'm pronouncing it correctly, that I actually think is in the district of Simon Harris in County Wicklow, less than 3,000 people.
00:11:40.720But they were planning on, like a fairly small close-knit place, and they were planning on putting a bunch of migrants in there.
00:11:47.100I don't think they had a public consultation on the matter.
00:11:50.600And it turned into protests, and there was some arson, and I think it devolved into a bit of a riot.
00:11:57.000Now, you were right there in the thick of it.
00:16:39.380Now, my own point of view is that you are a journalist, but you're also a human, and you're also a citizen and a voter, and you have a stake there.
00:16:51.800So you have, I suppose, each of us carry with us different identities at the same time.
00:16:56.700And I really have to tell you, I don't think it's inappropriate for you to say something as simple, obvious, and factually correct as he's on his knees.
00:17:05.460So I'm going to politely disagree with the folks who have chastised you for that.
00:17:09.060But for you to be pepper sprayed, when you clearly were a journalist, when, as you said, you weren't obviously throwing things, you weren't writing, you were documenting it, that's shocking.
00:17:22.120Did they, like, blast you right in the face?
00:17:27.900So he came right up to me, and I said, like, I'm a journalist, and I kept saying press, press, press.
00:17:35.240Because, like, obviously, when, like, a huge guy in a massive, like, combat suit is coming at you, you're just, you know, it's hard to form a sentence, and you're just, like, press, press, press, like a journalist.
00:17:46.360So the video, like, I don't know if you've seen the video, but the frame is zoomed, so I'm not actually as close to him as I look like I am.
00:17:55.740But, yeah, he came right up to me, sprayed it, and I kind of, I guess I went like this, because you can see my hand going up in the video, and then it got me, like, all here.
00:18:13.640But luckily, by some miracle, it didn't get straight into my eyeballs.
00:18:17.980So I definitely didn't get it as bad as the other people who got sprayed.
00:18:22.860Now, I saw, I think it was the boss of Gripped, John McGurk, if I'm not mistaken, who said he was rightfully outraged that you were targeted, and that he was going to bring this up with the police.
00:18:35.340Has he done so, and has there been any reaction?
00:18:39.940We in Canada have had similar things happen to us.
00:18:43.160Our reporter, David Menzies, has been arrested three times this year, if you can believe it.
00:19:30.120I would like to think he was just being overzealous.
00:19:33.340I don't have any reason to believe that Angarda Chikana don't like Gripped.
00:19:38.260I know that, in fact, some of them do because they actually voted overwhelmingly, over 90 percent, no confidence in their police commissioner, Drew Harris.
00:19:49.840So they're all working under a guy who, you know, more than 90 percent of them say they have no confidence in.
00:19:55.420So they're obviously in a really rubbish position now.
00:19:59.260And, you know, unfortunately for them, they are the tangible incarnation of the state's policies which they are being used to push through.
00:20:08.760So they are like people are really angry at them.
00:20:12.120You know, they're human beings as well.
00:20:13.880Like, I'm not happy with what he did, obviously.
00:20:17.040But I would like to think it wasn't targeted in any way.
00:20:20.960Well, I hope you get some information.
00:20:22.480I know that here in Canada we've lost our patience and we now sue police who attack our people.
00:20:28.500But, of course, that's a very sensitive decision that your team will make on its own terms.
00:20:33.400I'm thinking about the stats you said about little Newtown Mount Kenley, 3,000 people, and they want to put in, I think you said, 60 men and then more after that.
00:20:46.380What's the total number they're looking at?
00:20:58.040But I think this is where the figures from the UK might be quite relevant because there are over 1,000 asylum seekers in Ireland that haven't been given state accommodation.
00:21:12.260So, you know, there are rumors flying around left, right and center that they could be housing up to 1,000 people.
00:21:18.360The Department of Integration, who is overseeing all this, is not really fond of answering too many of my questions or at least not giving definitive answers to ones they don't like.
00:21:30.500And it was brought up in our parliament today that there are between 700 and 1.2 million undocumented migrants in the UK.
00:21:39.300Now, the flights to Rwanda have started going since yesterday.
00:21:43.360So, you've got to imagine, even if a tiny percentage of that, you know, possibly 1.2 million decide, well, Ireland sounds nicer than Rwanda, like, you know, you can only imagine that a huge percentage of them will want to try and come here.
00:21:59.680Right. And just for our viewers who aren't following it, Rwanda is an unusual, I'm not going to say experiment, I'm going to say a project that both the UK and Ireland to deport people who, because it's a safe place, if I understand, correct me, Fatima, if I'm wrong here.
00:22:18.720Rwanda has agreed to accept these migrants, and they're not in danger there.
00:22:24.620So, it's basically, they would like to stay in the five-star hotel called the UK or Ireland, and the government is saying, we'll save you from a violence of a war or discrimination, but you're going to have to stay at the two-star hotel in Rwanda, and we'll fly you there.
00:22:39.700Is that basically, do I understand it? It's basically moving the refugees to a third-party country. Is that right?
00:22:45.520Yeah, well, it's only the UK at the moment. Yeah, so they want to move them to Rwanda while their asylum claims are processed, because, you know, it has taken up, much like Ireland, it's taken up a lot of kind of public amenities like hotels and things like that.
00:23:03.100You know, there have even been instances of them being housed in floating hotels.
00:23:09.340So, you know, the place is bursting at the seams with all these people, many of whom are coming from safe countries claiming to be asylum seekers.
00:23:16.760You know, I'm doing the math again. If you said there's between 700,000 and 1.2 million asylum seekers in a country of 5 million, that's such an astonishing number.
00:23:25.480That's, let's just say, roughly 20%. That would be, again, in Canada, it's just so astonishing to even contemplate it.
00:23:34.120That would be like 8 million souls in Canada. It's just astonishing.
00:23:41.620So that's the UK. So the UK, like, has 700,000 to 1.2 million.
00:23:47.680Oh, so that's the UK. That's not Ireland.
00:23:49.660Okay, I misunderstood, because that many in Ireland would be unbelievable. I was having trouble understanding that.
00:23:56.900So that's the UK. Got it. And the reason you're raising that, and this is fascinating, I'm learning, is because when the UK voted for Brexit, it sort of voted for borders.
00:24:09.080And there was a dispute, because, of course, the UK borders Ireland. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom.
00:24:15.300And Ireland, I think, wanted free transit back and forth. And now Ireland's worried that these British migrants will come into Ireland. Is that right?
00:24:25.820Well, yeah. So our Justice Minister, Minister Helen McEntee, who I mentioned earlier, she said this week that 80% of asylum claimants coming to Ireland right now are actually coming from the UK.
00:24:37.480So, you know, and Rishi Sunak, the UK Prime Minister, has basically used that figure as proof that his Rwanda plan is working.
00:24:45.640He's like saying, look, guys, they're leaving. And it's like, you know, that's great for him, but they're coming to Ireland.
00:24:50.380And now it's our problem, essentially.
00:24:53.000You know, again, that's such an analogy with Canada, because a lot of migrants to the US come up across our unguarded border into Canada.
00:25:02.260And of course, the United States is a very safe place. There's no civil war there.
00:25:06.080They're just obviously shopping around. You know, I've learned so much from you about Ireland today, and I'm glad you clarified for me a few of the stats there, and that Rwanda is the UK project.
00:25:18.180But I can see what you mean, because if you're an asylum seeker in the UK and you're about to be given the boot, if you're about to be sent to Rwanda, but you can say, well, I can just walk across the border into Ireland,
00:25:29.240and it's a lot nicer in Dublin than in Kigali. Well, who wouldn't? I would. If I had to choose between Rwanda and Ireland, I'd choose Ireland every time. Isn't that interesting?
00:25:39.300Well, do you think that these protests, these street protests are going to continue?
00:25:45.040I mean, obviously, none of us want violence and riot and arson, but it's clear that these are such dramatic changes demographically, culturally.
00:25:56.040There have been spectacular crimes in Ireland recently that have been attributed to immigration policy.
00:26:05.500It's a sign of deep disagreement in the country, and I don't believe we should give in to violence, but there's obviously a lot of people who think those thoughts peacefully
00:26:14.440and feel like they're being ignored by the government, like they were ignored on all these other matters we talked about,
00:26:18.980from free speech to the referendums on motherhood, etc. I think that this issue is fascinating. Is it keeping, is the boiling continuing?
00:26:28.240Well, I mean, none of these protests happened in a vacuum, I think, is the issue.
00:26:32.400Like, people have been expressing peacefully that they don't agree with this.
00:26:35.880Like, I think the latest poll is that 79% of people think that the Irish government have taken in too many migrants.
00:26:42.260A quarter of a million migrants arrived in Ireland in 2022.
00:26:47.600That's between Ukrainians, other international protection applicants, and just, you know, regular migrants if they're working or studying or whatever it is.
00:26:55.520Like, a quarter of a million into a country of five million in one year is quite a lot.
00:28:04.960But you obviously have the respect not only of the grassroots people, but you actually do have the respect of the establishment in that they do talk with you.
00:28:13.260And even if their answers aren't great, they do answer you, and I think that you've achieved something really special at GRIPT in that you are loyal to the people, but you are still engaged with the establishment.
00:28:29.040Nice to see you, and once again, I'll just say to our viewers, if you want to follow GRIPT, you can go to their website, g-r-i-p-t dot i-e.
00:28:38.860Dot i-e is the country code on the internet suffix for Ireland, g-r-i-p-t dot i-e.
00:28:47.380Most of their content is free, but you can also be a member, a subscriber, and they do written work as well as videos.
00:28:55.200So, I just think they're great, and follow them on Twitter.
00:28:56.940Fatima, all the best to you and the team, and stay safe, and I know you were very brave, and you're being very careful about what you say about that pepper-spraying incident, and I hope it never happens to you again.
00:29:26.360So, I was so excited and interested and engrossed with what Fatima said, I talked to our friend, Efron Monsanto, our head of video, and the two of us are going to go over there.
00:30:09.940What a difference between genuine politics, which I've seen with the truckers two years ago, the anti-vaccine mandate protests, the anti-lockdown protests.
00:30:22.160I was in Alberta a few weeks ago looking at the carbon tax revolt.
00:30:26.180You ask those people what's on their mind, they'll talk your ear off.
00:30:32.340Even if you only ask one, they know why they're there.
00:30:35.160Whereas when I've been going to, well, I've been to several cities now, and our team has even gone to many more, none of the protesters want to talk because they don't know.
00:30:46.380The Middle East is a very complicated history in politics, and they just know that this is a rebellion against the man.