{"id":222966,"date":"2026-01-02T06:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T06:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/222966\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T06:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T06:15:13","slug":"sectarian-abuse-of-heather-humphreys-during-aras-campaign-a-wake-up-call-tanaiste-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/222966\/","title":{"rendered":"Sectarian abuse of Heather Humphreys during \u00c1ras campaign a ‘wake-up’ call, T\u00e1naiste says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Sectarian abuse levelled at Heather Humphreys during the presidential election campaign should be a \u201cwake-up call for our country\u201d, and shows the level of work required to unite Ireland, T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris has said.<\/p>\n

The Fine Gael leader has also defended a controversial attack video published by his party during the campaign, which criticised Catherine Connolly\u2019s work as a barrister for banks during repossession cases.<\/p>\n

Ms Humphreys became Fine Gael\u2019s presidential election candidate when Mairead McGuinness withdrew from the race due to illness.<\/p>\n

During the campaign, Fine Gael was criticised for \u201cattack videos\u201d targeting Ms Connolly’s professional work as a barrister, suggesting she sided with banks instead of people facing eviction.<\/p>\n

When asked if he regretted this strategy, which ultimately failed to stop Catherine Connolly from winning the election, Mr Harris simply said Ms Connolly had his \u201cfull support as president\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"Presidential<\/a><\/p>\n

However, he highlighted that Ms Humphreys faced online abuse because she was a Presbyterian, something he argued was not as widely discussed.<\/p>\n

\u201cObjectively, it [the Fine Gael video] was an ad that focused on politics and policy, and I don’t think it was overly personal [about Ms Connolly],\u201d Mr Harris said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething that wasn’t commented on at all really \u2014 and being honest, I only realised how bad it was after the campaign \u2014 was some of the online abuse and attacks towards Heather. That did not come from President Connolly. I\u2019m not suggesting it did at all. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut it’s interesting. One video was put out very upfront as, \u2018This is a video from Fine Gael talking about a policy issue and a political issue\u2019, versus many, many videos put up, often with no real ownership, that were sectarian in nature. I think that was maybe more profound in the campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Harris said he would like to see a united Ireland, but the sectarian abuse levelled at Ms Humphreys \u201cshows all of us how much work there is to be done\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe orange isn’t in the flag because we were looking for a third colour,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe orange is in the flag, with the white in the middle, because it represents our distinct history and our heritage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we’re to unite Ireland, we have to recognise that there are people on the island of Ireland, people who identify as Irish, people who identify as British, people who identify as both. <\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the sectarian element and the level of it, actually, is a wake-up call for our country in terms of the work required.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s easy to say, you want to unite Ireland. It\u2019s a hell of a lot of work you’ve to do to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sectarian abuse levelled at Heather Humphreys during the presidential election campaign should be a \u201cwake-up call for our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,978],"class_list":["post-222966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-presidential-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}