Verona Murphy has announced she will run as an independent candidate in the upcoming general election. Murphy was previously a Fine Gael by-election candidate who caused controversy with her comments about asylum seekers.
On Tuesday morning she was speaking on Today with Sean O’Rourke when she said that her previous comments had been “misquoted”.
“Not a racist”
Murphy was deselected as an election candidate by Fine Gael following her comments last year about asylum seekers. But during an interview with Sean O’Rourke she revealed that she will be running as an independent candidate in the upcoming election.
She remarked that she believes she has “a lot to offer” to the electorate and that she has “many supporters”. Murphy also maintained that she “is not a racist” and has “been continually misquoted by everyone”. And she insisted that she “raised a security issue and that issue stands”.
When asked why she previously stood as a Fine Gael candidate Murphy contended that:
At the time I didn’t understand that the party structure would be so inhibitive, and prohibitive, from free speech and the freedom to have your own opinion
Asylum seeker threat
In November Murphy was widely criticised for comments she made about asylum seekers. While speaking to RTÉ she said that asylum seekers arriving in Ireland would have to be “deprogrammed” because of the influence of ISIS. She also argued that ISIS have possibly “infiltrated” groups of asylum seekers coming to Ireland.
Murphy followed this with an interview in the Irish Times where she opined that ISIS supporters make up “a big part of the migrant population” in Ireland.
In another interview in December with South East Radio she defended her earlier comments. Murphy claimed that she was “raising a security issue” and that she is “at the coalface” of the issue of migration as the president of the Irish Road Haulage Association (IRHA).
Murphy also went on to ask:
Do we have to wait to have a London Bridge incident on Wexford Bridge?
During the interview she claimed her previous comments had “been misrepresented entirely in the media”.
Featured image via Twitter
