Matthew O'Toole

speaker

264 appearances 3 recordings 3 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 22 Jun

Matthew O'Toole’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.

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The News Agents · Special Report: Belfast riots - how Elon Musk is stoking a new wave of British violence · 10 Jun 2026 podcast

go away quickly.

A lot of this is orchestrated online and is, well obviously it's all nowadays orchestrated online pretty much and the kind of

the eye of the international far right and the people who promote the international far right tend to look at opportunities for them to push messages and that will move on at some point.

That's their kind of business model is that they find stories and things and appalling events like the grotesque act by this

individual the other night.

So yes, I think that will, one hopes, calm down, but clearly we have to find long-term ways of addressing the online space, what's happening there.

People will have legitimate views about immigration.

I don't want to be the person who's saying that no one can have a view about immigration, or indeed how people are managed or monitored.

But this was one individual, and he knew ethnicity has a monopoly on extreme violence.

Sadly, in Belfast, we have a history of extreme violence.

It's something that we're coming out of.

I think that's why it's important to be very direct about what we saw the other night.

You know, in that part of Belfast, the extreme violence happened over decades and the communities have memories of it.

So I think there will be a determination to move on from it.

So I think that hopefully will

will create some kind of sense of unity of purpose because we know what it's like to sink into violence.

We don't know all the circumstances around how he was managed or the individual case, but I think it's legitimate for people to ask questions about how this person was managed and how he got here and how he was monitored.

I don't think that in and of itself is racist or unacceptable, given the seriousness of what he's done.

I also don't think, though I am someone who emphasises the positives of immigration and I'm really, really clear about why immigration can be really important and is really important and diversity in my constituency in South Belfast, which is probably the most diverse constituency on the island of Ireland, is so welcome, in part because we couldn't have an NHS without it.

I would say that the idea that people are being prevented from talking about immigration policy or

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