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26th Apr 2019

Mairead McGuinness explains the impact of venomous views and comments in politics

Alan Loughnane

“I hope it’s just a phase we’re going through but I’m not so sure.”

If you haven’t listened to this week’s episode of Ireland Unfiltered with Dion Fanning then we urge you to correct that right now.

First Vice-President of the European Parliament Mairead McGuinness was this week’s guest and she is hoping to retain her seat in Europe in the Midlands-North-West constituency in next month’s European elections.

Speaking on the show, McGuinness spoke about venomous and extreme views and the problems they cause in politics.

Mairead: I’m all for moderation. I’m a big pursuer of it in all things because I see the problems when you don’t have it. And I’ve seen and shared debates which were pretty nasty and quite poisonous. When you’re sitting there, ‘Ok I’m sitting on this big podium and I’m not the biggest of individuals’, and you have people pouring venom out across the chamber and then others reacting because that’s what happens.

I’m glad we’re doing it with words but I can see why in the past it was done with weapons. And you know it’s very easy as a politician to set one group against the other, and that’s what we’re doing now, I mean I’m not doing it, I try and not do that, but there’s a lot of that about the place because you will get great oxygen for those type of strong views, but you cannot repair that then. It’s very hard to bring people together.

And I suppose there are leaders who are doing that right across Europe, across the world, so I hope it’s just a phase we’re going through but I’m not so sure.

Ireland Unfiltered, brought to you in partnership with Carlsberg Unfiltered, will be available everywhere you get your podcasts and on YouTube every Tuesday.