A man in his 20s is currently being detained at Cloverhill prison after he threatened to carry out a “mass shooting” in Dublin.

If you don’t read any further into that story, you might feel relieved that he’s behind bars, but as with so many things in life, it’s more complicated than that. 

The individual concerned has “terror convictions” and was deported from the UK as per a court report featured in the Irish Independent this morning.

More specifically, he has several convictions for threatening to carry out mass murder and to use biological weapons.

You may be wondering how on earth did such a dangerous individual ended up on our green shores, well, keep reading:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, after a UK court ordered his deportation, he made his way to Ireland and claimed asylum via our ridiculously porous international protection system.

At this point you probably want to know who this man is or where he is from, well, that’s the thing.

As I wrote last week, Section 26 of the International Protection Act 2015 prevents the publication of the names of anyone who is an international protection applicant, be they rapist, murderer, or – as in this case – someone with “terror conviction”. 

I also wrote that, in circumstances where such an individual is brought before the courts on criminal charges, it is the commitment of this publication to include that they are asylum seekers just as we would include that they are a student or a nurse.

In response to the case, TD Carol Nolan said, “Once again we have a disturbing example of a system weighted in favour of criminals and threats to public safety.”

“Its an international protection system not a witness protection programme. Getting these scumbags out of our country should be the top priority alongside notifying the public of the existence of extreme threats in their communities.”

You would think that something so serious as “terror convictions”- especially in light of his threats to shoot innocent people in our capital city – would spur the righteous minds behind a national newspaper into naming this fiend, because to do so is so clearly in the public interest, but alas, this did not happen.

Instead the Indo included a paragraph on why it couldn’t name the man.

This law should not be allowed to prevent the Irish people from knowing when criminals enter our  country via the international protection process.

It is also in the interest of public safety that people have a means of knowing if someone living in their midst poses a threat to them. 

According to the court report, this man has been taken into custody three times. Where was he apart from that?

Again and again the public have been told that we have “moral and legal obligations” to accept unlimited numbers of asylum seekers when many of our services are at breaking point.

We do not, and never have had, “moral” obligations to shield dangerous criminals from the eyes of the public.