Another Love Ulster march through the centre of the capital will result in more riots and violence, a city councillor warned today.
Cllr Jim O’Callaghan is trying to stop the march by Unionist maverick Willie Frazer going ahead next month.
Today he called on other members of Dublin City council to stop the demonstration which would see hundreds of Loyalists carrying Union Jacks march down O’Connell Street and on to Leinster House on Kildare Street.
A similar march in 2006 led to the worst riots seen in the capital in years and resulted in over a dozen people taken to hospital and over 40 arrests.
Cllr O’Callaghan told Today with Sean O’Rourke on RTE Radio 1 that Willie Frazer’s march is nothing but a publicity stunt which could end in chaos.
He said: “It was an unnecessary march back in March 2006 and I think this is another provocative and unnecessary march.
“Listeners should remember back in February 2006 Willie organised a march on the streets of Dublin. It was the last time we had a riot on the streets of Dublin.
“We had 14 people who were hospitalised and we had significant damage to businesses around the area of O’Connell Street and it’s the last thing that Dublin needs at present is another Willie Frazer march.
“As a councillor I can’t stop Willie Frazer from having his march but what I can do, as an elected representative of the people of Dublin, is try to get my fellow councillors to let Willie know that the people of Dublin don’t want this march.
“It’s unnecessary, it damaged our reputation before and I think it’s just Willie looking for publicity.”
But Willie Frazer denied the claim and hit out at Irish governments over the decades for ignoring the victims of IRA violence in the border counties.
He said: “It’s nothing to do with publicity, it’s to do with the right to have justice and the recognition of the hypocrisy of the Irish government over the last 40 odd years and how they treated victims in the Border community.
“If those people who complain about the rioting in Dublin were as proactive in trying to get justice for the victims perhaps we wouldn’t need to go to Dublin.”
Mr Frazer said that the march would not go ahead if he was advised by Gardaí that it could potentially result in violence.
But he said he would not be intimidated by those who would try to stop the march with threats of violence.
He added: “We are not prepared to allow violence to get the upper hand. We’ll not bow the knee to people who threaten us with the use of violence or actually carry it out.
“We believe we are entitled to the same rights as anybody else and that is the right to have justice and are free from fear and intimidation and the Irish State have a duty of responsibility, as a neighbouring state, to look after citizens around the Northern Ireland Border who should have been looked after by two security forces, not one.”
During the last Love Ulster march serious rioting broke out in the centre of Dublin as the demonstration began to go down O’Connell Street and a number of gardai were injured.
Stones and fireworks were thrown after republican demonstrators mounted a counter-march.
