Mayo TD Alan Dillon: 'Our democracy needs to be protected against extremism'

Speaking at an event in Westport today, current Mayo TD Alan Dillon (Fine Gael) addressed present Local and European election candidates: "I know it's been a tough number of weeks but you're on the home stretch, and I've no doubt that your hard work will come to fruition and I think it's really important to ensure that our politics does work now more than ever and while it's not perfect, our democracy certainly needs to be protected against the rise of extremism, populism and polarisation."

Dillon's remarks come at a time when the voting ballots across the county and the Republic see more far-right candidates from parties such as the Irish Freedom Party, the National Party and 'The Irish People' as well as Independents like controversial media figure John Waters. 

Interviewed by The Mayo News, Dillon explained: "Certainly we've seen across some campaigns and some candidates that there has been an extreme or polarisation towards their views which in normal society wouldn't be accepted and the issue around migration always is to the fore and it is one that is dominating a lot of the debate during both the Europeans and the local elections and Ireland itself probably hasn't seen the influx of migrants to this degree in its history due to a combination of reasons."

He stressed the humanitarian aspect towards it and where Ireland was seen to be a safe shelter, has stability, good leadership, is a military neutral country.

Dillon referred to Ireland's own experience in times of extreme hardship: "We have in one sense sought shelter ourselves during the famine period in other countries and we were accepted and we were allowed to flourish. But to another degree we see in other countries there is no simple solution to the problems that we face and I certainly feel we are better united with other countries in trying to look for a more uniform approach in relation to trying to find solutions to problems."