City council 'need to step up' to ensure safety of library workers, says Sinn Féin's Louise O'Reilly

Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on Enterprise, Trade and Employment has said Cork City Council needs to ensure that library staff have a safe place to work.

On a recent visit to Cork, Deputy Louise O’Reilly told The Echo that library staff have a legal entitlement to safety in their workplace.

Ms O’Reilly was speaking the context of a months-long campaign carried out by far right activists who have targeted Cork’s Central Library in opposition to LGBTQ+ young adult reading material available in the library.

The union Fórsa, which represents the majority of civil and public servants, has accused Cork City Council of a “dereliction of duty” and has threatened industrial action over what it said was the council’s failure in its duty of care to its staff.

Ms O’Reilly, who is Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, said what was happening to staff in Cork’s central library was, first and foremost, about safety in the workplace.

“The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act is one of the strongest pieces of legislation that we have and it’s there for a very good reason, it places an obligation on the employee, the worker themselves, also it places an obligation on their employer,” she said.

“People are entitled to have a safe place to work, this actually has a lot less to do with politics, and a lot more to do with people's health and safety at work and that’s the angle that Fórsa have taken and the argument that they're making, which I think is a very compelling argument.” 

“They have a legal entitlement to that safe place to work, and I think Cork City Council need to step up."

Asked whether Sinn Féin needed to take a stronger stance against the far right, Ms O’Reilly said she did not believe so.

“I think we have taken a very strong stance and I think when you see visible displays, anti-far-right, you will always see Sinn Féin there, always, we have always stood with those people who are with people who are the victims of the far right, and a lot of the work that we do is door-to-door, conversation by conversation,” she said.

“Big statements in the media are grand, but at the back of it all, what you need to do is you need to go into communities.

“My party’s stand against the far right, we do it every day, not just when there’s an issue, we do it every day,” Ms O’Reilly said.

Safety is 'paramount'

Last month, Cork city librarian David O’Brien told a meeting of Cork City Council that from the outset of the incidents at the library, he had contacted various people locally and nationally seeking advice on how best to respond. He said there had been ongoing discussions with senior management in city council.

“We have been working on it, we are working on it… there is a process being put in place where we will have a procedure that goes with that,” he said.

Mr O’Brien stated that several risk assessments have been carried out, and he stressed that the safety of library staff is “paramount”.

At the June meeting of the Cork City Joint Policing Committee (JPC), Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said that the right to peaceful protest does not grant a right to intimidate or threaten, and gardaí have a duty to intervene where people are subjected to intimidation.

At that meeting, Ann Doherty, chief executive of Cork City Council, said the safety and well-being of council staff was the executive’s number one priority.