GARDAÍ have sent warrants to Tik Tok to be allowed conduct searches of Tik Tok accounts to try to find the source of the intimidation and threats against Mayoral candidate, Daniel Butler.
And the sitting Fine Gael Limerick councillor said he would not let “thugs” prevent him continuing in the race to be Limerick’s first directly elected mayor.
Asked if he had sought Garda protection, Cllr Butler replied: “No it is not something I have thought about — Gardaí are busy enough and they have enough to be doing.”
“I have to thank them (Gardaí) for their support, they have taken this seriously from day one. When I have issued a statement they have been active on it they have issued warrants to Tik Tok to try and find out who is behind these accounts, and they have been in touch with me regularly,” he said.
Cllr Butler said: “I won’t be intimidated, its as simple as that. I’ve been in politics long enough and I’m tough enough and resilient enough, and most importantly my wife and family are behind me, and if they felt they weren’t happy for me to keep going, I would quiet happily step aside.”
“My wife is as determined as me, I wouldn’t be here without her and her support, and we are standing up for other people like us who have been intimidated by thugs out there – it is unfortunately on the rise – and we are not going to stand for it and we are going to use it as fuel to get us across that line.”
“There is a bigger picture here, politics has changed and the attitude and the boundaries around what is acceptable have been blurred significantly,” Cllr Butler said.
“I think we have to start to realise that we are going to struggle to attract new people, new blood, new talent into politics and ultimately politics will suffer and then we all will suffer if we don’t have the right caliber of people at senior government and local government level making decisions that have significant impacts on all our lives.”
“We all need to stand up as as collective, rather than as individuals, to take this on, it is only as a collective as a community and as a country can we successfully take this on.”
Gardaí are investigating allegations that Cllr Butler received an anonymous telephone call which mentioned a member of his family and that he received an abusive message on the Instagram social media platform.
Previously photographs of Mr Butler’s family home were posted online and calls were made by anonymous online trolls to cause criminal damage to the house.
