It was  with a heavy heart that I rose today in the Seanad to offer my sympathies to the family of the late Jo Cox MP.  Sadly neither her son of 5 nor her daughter of just 3 years will ever have known the great humanitarian their mother was.  Sadly neither of those children will now ever fully experience the woman who believed that motherhood was her greatest joy, a joy that in fact surpassed all political ambition. 

We must ask why this beautiful woman’s life was taken from her. Was it the Brexit referendum?  That would be the easy answer.  We could possibly live with the idea that some deranged person driven by a passion for one side of the Brexit debate saw himself as doing a service to the cause.  While there may be some truth in that hypothesis it does not provide a complete answer.  The truth is we are living in an ever more violent society and  hate is a growing phenomenon.