Former Taoiseach condemns Paris atrocity

Former Taoiseach, John Bruton criticised those involved in the Paris atrocity at the Pride of Place awards competition in Ennis on Saturday night.

These awards were hosted by Clare County Council, which was the first time one authority organised the ceremony for two successive years.

In an address to over 800 community activists in Tracey’s West County Hotel, the Cooperation Ireland deputy chairman claimed the perpetrators lacked a sense of civic pride, which had driven them to acts of violent extremism including killing people from their own country.

Mr Bruton revealed his wife’s sister is married to a French man and her son-in-law is French.

“We feel this in a very special way. France and Ireland have a long association together and my family have an even closer association.

Describing the Paris atrocity as a “true tragedy”, he said it was important for anyone addressing a large crowd of over 800 to express sympathy with the French people following the death of at least 129 people.
He expressed sympathy with the individual French families who lost daughters, sons and loved one in the tragedy.

“It is probably too long to be thinking of why and what can be done in a truly reflective way. On the other hand, it is never any harm to start thinking about it.

“If you want to look at what is missing in the lives of these young men (perpetrators), many of them have been brought up in Europe in France, Britain and Belgium. “In most cases they got a good education and did not suffer poverty and yet for some reason they decided to go to another country to become involved in a destructive ideology, which led them to come home to kill their neighbours.

“They killed nationals of their own country in which they were born. What is missing in their lives? They lack a pride of place. They don’t feel a sense of pride in the country in which they have grown up.

“They have alienated themselves or have been alienated from France, Britain in the case of others, and possibly there may be people in that category who may have been alienated from Ireland, who have been or are being educated in Ireland.

“They don’t feel they belong and I feel that is largely a failure on their part. It is a failure of imagination and a failure to see that your can’t live out your life for some abstract ideal or some destructive ideology without taking into account, appreciating and being proud of the place in which you have been brought up and your neighbours.”

He said the perpetrators have allowed themselves to become alienate d from their own neighbours, communities and friends in France, Britain, Belgium or whatever country applied.

He explained that Cooperation Ireland worked hard through awards scheme like Pride of Place to ensure that this type of alienation doesn’t happen in Ireland.

He said Cooperation Ireland reached out to people of all communities and backgrounds whether they are first generation Irish or second generation, British, Muslim, Protestant or Catholic.

Having attended a conference in Madrid recently, which examined what to do to counter violent extremism, he recalled the general consensus was there is a category of young men who are looking for an opportunity to be different from their peers and wanted something they could really believe in – a “cause greater than themselves”.

“They want something bigger than themselves that they can sacrifice themselves. Somehow or other in Western society we may be failing to offer people in certain communities that bigger cause or a cause greater than themselves that they can sacrifice their time for.

Addressing contestants in the Pride of Place competition, he said that they had provided an answer to this dilemma.

“You have a lot to teach the rest of the world. What you are doing is intimately relevant to the problems that Europe is facing today, problems of an immense scale that could lead to the dissolution, if they are not dealt with of, the European Union and the border free zone we enjoy and many of the liberties we have so carefully constructed since 1945.

“ All of that is at risk. Any yet the answer is not to be found in declarations by presidents or Prime Ministers, it is to be found in individual actions by people like yourselves. That is why tonight’s event is so much at the centre of what we need to day,” he said.

Dan Danaher