After recently announcing proposed road closures for Christmas markets in Limerick City, Mayor John Moran has received numerous threatening and homophobic comments online. Moran informed councillors at the Metropolitan District of Limerick about the situation, and that An Garda Síochana had been contacted.

Some of these derogatory comments included, “He’s a cyclops b*stard wasting our money shoot the f*g”.

According to RTÉ, Moran shared, “What’s worrying me now is that it’s like people are feeling emboldened by maybe events happening outside of Limerick and the way comments are happening in other countries, indeed in our own, and they’re coming out of the shadows and they’re no longer just faceless accounts.”

The Gardaí are currently in the process of investigating the situation, as Moran explained, “They asked me to come down to the station. We looked over some of [the comments] and now we’re engaged in an exercise of trying to collect them all.”

 

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Galway City Mayor Helen Ogbu has also been a victim of racist online abuse recently, with the city council’s Chief Executive Leonard Clearly stating, “Any form of intimidating behaviour, including harassment, hate speech, racism, and bullying, is not accepted by Galway City Council and will not be tolerated.”

The Association of Irish Local Government (AILG) addressed both of these incidents in a public statement, saying, “The Association of Irish Local Government (AILG) has strongly condemned the threats, intimidation and discriminatory abuse directed at local elected representatives, following disturbing reports involving Limerick’s Directly Elected Mayor, John Moran, and Galway City Mayor, Cllr. Helen Ogbu”

AILG President Aengus O’Rouke added that the harmful online comments towards both Moran and Ogbu were “disgusting, deeply hurtful and completely unacceptable.”

Limerick Pride has also put out a statement on social media in solidarity with Mayor Moran, saying, “Every year, hundreds of people March in Limerick Pride; yet we are still faced with the same question: why do we need Pride? The homophobic comments and death threats made against Mayor John Moran show that it is still necessary to have Pride. To call out this sort of vile language.”

They concluded, “Limerick should be proud to have an openly gay mayor… We call on other organisations and other groups that come out to Pride parades to disavow this kind of language and these calls for violence against these sorts of homophobic attacks against public figures.”

John Moran replied to the statement with the comment, “Thank-you. Your statement means a lot to me and Damien (his partner)”.

 

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