T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris has condemned the \u201cdirect threats\u201d targeting his family that had been made on social media. <\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed are investigating the threats against the Fine Gael leader and his family which were allegedly made at the weekend.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Monday, Mr Harris said as a father he had \u201cvery strong views and feelings\u201d on the issue, while as a political leader he found it \u201cunacceptable in every way\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cLet me be clear: threatening people – any person – is a crime,\u201d he said. \u201cThreatening children is despicable. It is cowardice and it is a line that no decent society should tolerate being crossed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will not be commenting further at this time on any ongoing Garda investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the latest threat, a Garda spokesperson said: \u201cAn Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na is currently investigating this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Fine Gael leader has received threats before, including through social media and a phoned bomb threat.<\/p>\n
Protests have also been held outside his home in Co Wicklow where his wife and children live.<\/p>\n
In June 2024, an anonymous caller rang a Samaritans helpline and claimed there was an explosive device at the Harris family home. The alarm was immediately raised by the organisation.<\/p>\n
Mr Harris, who was in the D\u00e1il in the evening of the incident, said at the time the bomb hoax was intended to \u201cintimidate and upset\u201d his family, describing the events as an \u201cunacceptable situation\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really wish to comment on it other than to say obviously this is clearly unacceptable situation. Even the word hoax I\u2019m not sure is a fair word as I\u2019ve no doubt these things are done to intimidate and upset. I have young children, I have a wife,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Such threats represented \u201ca really unacceptable situation\u201d, Mr Harris said, adding when masked people turn up outside his house it should not be described in media reports as a \u201cprotest\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris has condemned the \u201cdirect threats\u201d targeting his family that had been made on social media.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,7335,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-36049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-irish-politics","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}