There are fears a British far-right campaigner will further inflame the anti-immigration movement here as he arrives in Ireland.
Anti-Islam Tommy Robinson - whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon - is understood to be in Dublin to make a documentary about a surge of anti-immigration protests here. He updated his followers on the Telegram website to say he was visiting Dublin as a journalist.
"Just a quick message to Irish politicians, left wing nutcase activists and ‘journalists’ in mainstream media. I invited myself to Ireland. I’m a journalist. I’ll go where I want. Just to set the record straight,” he wrote.
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He also posted a video saying: “Just wait til they find out I flew in on my Irish passport.” There are now fears his presence here will further inflame anti-immigration protests.
It follows a number of recent violence incidents in recent weeks, including the arson of a building in Dublin city centre that was wrongly believed to be intended to house asylum seekers.
His Irish supporters include the far right activist Dee Wall, who has been seen at several anti-immigration protests in recent weeks. It is understood gardai are aware of his arrival into the country.
Robinson, who has been banned from most major social media platforms at one time or another, was a founder of the English Defence League - a far right Islamophobia organisation. He served multiple jail terms for crimes including the assault of an off-duty police officer.
He also lost a high-profile libel case in 2021 brought against him by a teenager. Jamal Hijazi was 15 at the time and was assaulted in Huddersfield in 2018. A video of the teen being assaulted went viral shortly after the incident - with Robinson claiming in two Facebook videos that the teen was “not innocent and he violently attacked young English girls in his school.”
The High Court rejected Robinson's argument that his claims were substantially true.
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