Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris has condemned “sinister and subversive threats” against his family in the past week, adding that he had to “dig pretty deep to show up here today”.
Gardaí are investigating a series of threats to Mr Harris and his family in recent days.
Asked by journalists at the Fine Gael think-in in Mullingar this afternoon about his statement over the weekend about the abuse and if it suggested he was contemplating his future in politics, Mr Harris sidestepped the question but said: “I’m here, I’m doing my job … We’re getting on with the work.”
Mr Harris said he had experienced threats towards his children. “Threats of appalling, unspeakable violence, towards very close relatives. And yesterday, a series of co-ordinated, orchestrated threats [against his home] conveyed to Garda stations.
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“This isn’t normal. This can’t be normalised, nor can it be accepted. So what I said in my statement ... the usual way you deal with this is you’re meant to just kind of shut up. Pretend you didn’t see the comment, say nothing and hope it moves on.
“But I do see a clear pattern here that I think is deeply concerning and I think it’s deeply concerning beyond me as an individual,” Mr Harris said.
“So what I said in my statement was I think we’re at a moment of inflection, we have to really think that as a political system. I want to talk to my Fine Gael colleagues, my government colleagues. I’ll talk to my political opponents about how we address these issues, because I don’t think we take them seriously enough in this country. I’m not sure if these things happened in another European country that they’d just kind of be acknowledged, something that – ‘it’s terrible and it shouldn’t have happened to you’ – and then we just move on."
Mr Harris said he would talk to and be guided by his family “because I have two jobs”.
“I’m the leader of Fine Gael, I’m the Tanaiste of the Government, and I’m also a member of my family and I need to work through that. So look, leadership is about showing up, I had to dig pretty deep to show up today. But I’m here, and I’m getting on with the job.”
Mr Harris also insisted that the budget would seek to introduce measures to help people with the cost of living. However, he said these would be on a sustainable basis, and would not repeat the one-off giveaways, such as the energy credits and the double payments of child benefit, of recent years.
He cited childcare and the cost of going to college as areas in which he hoped to see permanent reductions introduced. He said that the means test for carers would be abolished “over the lifetime of this government”.
Asked about the possibility of tax breaks in the budget for property developers, Mr Harris said the Government “has to look at every possible lever that can be pulled”.
He said the Government had taken a number of “big” and “bold” steps to improve the supply of housing. “If we make another decision in the weeks ahead, then that has to be it ... And those who are in the business of building homes and apartments need to get on with it at that stage, and they need to know that is it.”
Mr Harris rubbished criticisms – including by Tesla founder Elon Musk – that Fine Gael was behaving in an anti-democratic fashion by telling its councillors not to back any other candidates.
“It’s utter nonsense,” he said. “The Fine Gael party is backing the Fine Gael candidate – hold the front page!”
Mr Harris said Mr Musk was backing a man [Conor McGregor] “who has been found liable for rape in courts ... He might have say in who’s president of the United States but he has not say in terms of who the President of Ireland is.”
