Helen McEntee, Ireland’s Minister for Justice, has been told to resign amid a rapid rise in crime in the country’s capital Dublin.
Having been under pressure for the last number of months, open calls for her removal have emerged from within Fianna Fáil, a party that is in coalition with McEntee’s own Fine Gael group.
“We have no confidence in the ability of Fine Gael to effectively and properly manage the justice ministry,” Fianna Fáil’s youth wing’s said in a public statement posted online.
“It is for these reasons that we call on justice minister Helen McEntee… to resign,” they added.
🚨We are calling for @HMcEntee to resign with immediate effect 🚨
read more below👇 pic.twitter.com/h7E2n7COFq
— Ógra Fianna Fáil (@OgraFiannaFail) July 31, 2023
The demand comes after a major increase in gang violence in Dublin, with videos of local teenagers attacking passers-by gaining international attention.
Such violence has prompted numerous foreign embassies in the country to issue safety warnings, with the US Government telling its citizens to “keep a low profile” while in Ireland.
“Helen is starting to look very weak,” Irish news outlet Extra reports one allegedly senior source within the minister’s own Fine Gael party as saying after the foreign warnings were issued.
“Crime under a Fine Gael minister [Nora Owen] cost us the 1997 election,” the source added. “We are in real danger of repeating the error.”
The spike in crime is just the latest of a number of controversies facing McEntee.
Having come under fire for her handling of illegal immigration into Ireland earlier in 2023, she is now also facing criticism for her efforts to pass anti-hate-speech legislation in the country.
Threatening to criminalise the possession of certain “offensive materials”, including memes, the proposed hate-speech bill has prompted international condemnation, with major figures such as US tech billionaire Elon Musk and former US President Donald Trump coming out to criticise the proposed law as an attack on free speech.
Some critics of the legislation have also called on her to resign, with Sarah Hardiman, spokeswoman for the pro-free-speech advocate group Free Speech Ireland (FSI), telling Brussels Signal that it would like to see the minister removed from her post.
“FSI is deeply concerned that minister McEntee will ignore the concerns of the public and her colleagues in the [Irish Senate] who have loudly voiced their concerns that this proposed bill is an oppressive law,” she said.
“For this reason, we would call for her resignation.”
