I was going to write this email about Gerry Houlihan, who, along with his family, sold DID Electrical last week to Select Technology Group. 

Houlihan was still in his early 20s when he founded the retail chain in the late 1960s, and he used the success of the business to diversify into other enterprises such as supermarkets, commercial property and, most notably, hotels. Houlihan’s story is fascinating, and it is one I will return to in the coming days.

But it is impossible not to reflect upon the chilling events that took place in our capital city on Thursday. The details have been well covered, but the headline numbers still make for depressing reading: 13 shops looted, three buses and one Luas tram set on fire and 11 Garda vehicles damaged. Numerous gardaí were injured. By Friday morning, 34 people had been arrested.

The scenes were unprecedented in Ireland. But they are not unprecedented. We have witnessed similar riots in other European countries over the past 12 months, fuelled by a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment and a growth in both the visibility and the popularity of far-right parties.

It is not something that we have had to deal with here. There have been sporadic incidents before, but it was easy to dismiss those behind them as fringe extremists operating in the margins.

Instead, we looked at the centrist nature of our mainstream politics and comforted ourselves that the violent protests we witnessed in other European cities, spurred by a toxic blend of nationalism and racism, could not happen here.

We were wrong. And we were wrong on a number of levels. 

Thursday marked the end of Irish exceptionalism. An end to the belief that we were different from other nations and that we were immune from the rise of the extreme right and from the appeal of the strong man/weak man narrative – a narrative that the MMA fighter Conor McGregor spread to his 10.2 million followers on the social media platform once known as Twitter.

Instead, thanks to such social media platforms, which double as a radicalisation tool, we now know that the far right has long existed here. It was just hiding in plain sight, operating on the extremes of the political establishment. Over the years, it was clouded in nationalism, extreme socialism. The labels differed. But it was there, stalking the stage like a threatening apparition. There were elements of it within all major political parties. 

Watching events on Thursday unfold, I could not help but keep asking myself the same question: What is driving these young men –and they were overwhelmingly young and overwhelming men – to loot shops, burn buses and injure gardaí? 

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris talked about “an element of radicalisation that is disruptive to our society”. But how and why do people get radicalised in the first place? 

Yes, some people just want to cause chaos. It was ever thus. But this is deeper than thuggery – and, yes, there were thugs there also, opportunists who fancied a pair of new runners and opted to loot. But there was a deeply racist undercurrent to the protests, and it would be unwise to forget that. 

The motivation for the rioting and the arson was the sad and disturbing stabbing attack outside a school that left three children and a carer injured. This was the excuse and the motivation for what transpired. 

We have a far left in Ireland. They protest and use slogans. The far right now uses arson and fear. And they justify their actions through an ideology of nationalism, a flimsy concept that Ireland needs saving from outsiders.   

That ideology has been assisted by language. And that is where our mainstream politicians need to be more careful in their choice of words. 

How many times have we heard from elected representatives that Ireland is full? How many times have we heard significant concerns that the refugees who arrive have not been vetted? How many times have we heard that the bulk of the people arriving here are men? 

We heard it again in the Dáil last week, when Danny Healy-Rae was talking about refugees in his own constituency “fighting amongst themselves”, adding that he did not know where they came from or what records they have. “This has gone too far,” he said. 

I am not in any way suggesting that the Kerry TD was supportive of what occurred in Dublin on Thursday evening. Far from it. But it is the sort of language that normalises division; it is rhetoric that creates a sense of us versus them.

And it comes within the context of a political tide that is creating a crisis out of everything. Housing. Health. Climate. Pensions. Everything is a crisis. Yes, they may well be but there needs to be more nuance to the debate. If everything is a crisis, then does each crisis lose its profound meaning? Do we stop caring because there is too much to care about?

Increasingly, our political debate has moved away from solutions to problems. And when you create a problem, you need someone to blame. It can be the government. It can be foreigners. But someone has to be blamed.

In recent days, many opposition politicians looked to An Garda Síochána, asking questions about their support for Drew Harris or if the response was quick enough. They are questions for another day. Perhaps we could stand back and remember that one side was setting fire to buses and looting buildings, while another side tried to stop them. Yes, there may have been policing failures. But we need to discuss the more consequential issues first. 

So what are the solutions? Well, the answer is not to ban immigration. Rather, it needs to focus on social inclusion. Bertie Ahern had his faults, but he understood the value of cash. In this case, I mean unlocking more funding to develop community programmes in inner-city Dublin and in other socially deprived areas.

We have models for this. The government threw vast sums at Limerick and Drogheda to undermine the criminal elements that were taking hold in both places. We need to roll the programmes out further, and try to foster a sense of community. We need more integration, not less. We need more dialogue. Not less. And if we need to pump more money into areas, then let us do it. 

We have always had a far right. It has just become more public and more visceral. Now, we need to deal with it. 

*****

Elsewhere last week, I caught up with Ibec CEO Danny McCoy ahead of a major Ibec conference on the S in ESG. He talked about the importance of the social element of the three-headed acronym. However, in a heavily complex world, he outlines the problems that it poses for business leaders.

Earlier this year, German accountancy firm ETL acquired 51 per cent of accountancy firm Noone Casey. Anthony Casey talked about the deal and the ETL model, and his plans to roll out the model around Ireland.

Ireland’s largest nursing homes group suffered from the scandal that nearly broke its French multinational parent last year, but a bail-out agreed in Paris is beginning to trickle down into this country. Thomas had the details.

As a former FBI agent, Jason Smolanoff led some of the world’s largest cybercrime investigations. Now with Kroll, he talked about the rise of cyberwarfare, ransomware, and the lengths that some criminal gangs will go to cover their tracks.