Cork city councillors voice support for library staff targeted by protests

Cork City Council members have reaffirmed their support for library staff in the face of “bullying and harassment” by activists protesting about the provision of LGBTQ+ literature to young adults.

Councillors unanimously backed a motion proposed by Labour’s Cllr John Maher condemning what he described as “the vigilantism” of those who have subjected staff in the Central Library on Grand Parade to “bullying and harassment.”

In a defence of both Cork City Library staff and the LGBTQ+ community, Cllr Maher spoke about his own journey as a gay man and he urged his fellow councillors to stand up to “the bullies” who harass and accuse library staff of grooming and promoting paedophilia.

“We know of members of our community, library staff in our city, pharmacy staff, workers, gardaí who are now regularly harassed, recorded without their consent and called names. I’m proud of our city, but the reality is many don’t feel safe and this is something we must acknowledge and address.

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“Gardai on the ground do an incredible job but Garda management must be more consistent in the handling of these incidents. It’s not good enough to escort protesters opposing Nato from UCC one day and the next day, leave a vocal minority shout slurs and take videos of innocent workers.”

Cllr Colette Finn of the Green Party seconded Cllr Maher’s motion and said people need to realise that far right groups were mobilising in Ireland, “latching on to any topic that they think they can galvanise people around” and they needed to be faced down.

[ Unions welcome Varadkar pledge to protect Cork library staff but ask for stronger policing ]

“So, I think as a council we have to very openly say to these people, ‘Stop it - stop it because it is not the kind of Ireland that we want’ and I want our Garda Siochana, to follow through on our laws, that it is not acceptable to be intimidatory and aggressive to people who are going to work.”

Cllr Lorna Bogue of An Rabharta Glas said she was supportive of the motion but while words of solidarity were welcome, what was needed was action as proposed by Fórsa, the union representing library workers, which last Friday organised a march to Cork City Hall to highlight the issue.

She said the union was seeking an independent risk assessment of the dangers posed to library workers, clear emergency response measures from the Garda and an updating of library by-laws to allow Cork City Council to injunct agitators from entering the libraries.

“I think that we actually do have quite a lot of capacity to police (this problem) …. but it sort of seems to me that even though these flagrantly unlawful acts are happening, they are not being policed as unlawful acts and I think that is a problem,” she said.

[ Calls to protect library staff from harassment from far right agitators over LGBTQ+ books ]

Independent Cllr Mick Finn called on Garda management to “step it up” when it came to policing the problem.

“Maybe we need some sort of a rapid response measure (from gardai) - are we looking at a case where we need to have a security person on the door of a library to stop people entering or do we need to look at a security presence in the building in the event of something happening? "

Cllr Eolan Ryng of Sinn Fein said last week’s rally in support of library workers clearly showed the value of being in a trade union as staff in pharmacies were targeted by the same group protesting about vaccinations and they did not have any such protection.

Cllr Ted Tynan warned that the lessons of history from Germany in the 1930s showed that a policy of appeasement, when people started burning books, did not work and he called for a robust response from both the Garda Siochana and Cork City Council management to protect library staff.

Cllr John Sheehan of Fianna Fáil said the protesters were “essentially bullies intimidating library staff” and they needed to be faced down while Cllr Shane O’Callaghan of Fine Gael pointed out that the same agitators had tried to disrupt last year’s Michael Collins Commemoration at Beal na Bláth.

Cork City Librarian David O’Brien, who revealed he had been called “a paedophile and a freemason” on social media, said he wanted to reassure councillors that management were not ignoring the issue and had already carried out a number of risk assessments on the dangers for staff.

This led to a decision in March to close the library for the first time in 130 years as they feared far right protesters would rush the library when two rival rallies were being held on the Grand Parade.

Library management had taken an approach where “we are trying to dampen down the flames, because the more fuel you give to this stuff, the more it goes bananas” but after talks with Cork City Hall, a process was now in place that would lead to a procedure to deal with the issue, he said.