A small Jewish community in Ireland has documented more than 140 antisemitic incidents in just six months through a newly established reporting system, in what marks the first formal attempt to track such incidents in the country.
The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland published its findings on Monday, covering the period between July 2025 and January 2026. Ireland’s Jewish population numbers approximately 2,200 people, making the 143 reported incidents — which included verbal abuse, vandalism, threats, discrimination and direct digital hate messages — a significant figure relative to the size of the community. Physical assaults were less common, accounting for three of the reported cases.
A notable finding was that 30 per cent of the incidents were triggered by visible markers of Jewish identity, such as a Jewish symbol, a Hebrew accent or speaking Hebrew in public. JRCI chair Maurice Cohen said such patterns could not be addressed through standard anti-racism frameworks alone. “Antisemitism presents distinct characteristics requiring targeted policy responses,” he said, calling for “a dedicated, standalone national plan to combat antisemitism in Ireland.”
The report also highlighted that 25 of the recorded incidents involved Holocaust distortion or antisemitic conspiracy theories — a finding that sits alongside a Claims Conference survey from January in which nine per cent of Irish adults said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, and a further 17 per cent believed the number of Jews killed had been greatly exaggerated. Half of Irish adults surveyed did not know that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
The JRCI acknowledged that all incidents were self-reported and could not be independently investigated. Crucially, Ireland currently has no official state mechanism for recording antisemitic incidents, and while police record hate crimes based on nationality, ethnicity or religion, antisemitism is not tracked as a separate category.
Ireland’s chief rabbi Yoni Wieder said the report reflected what he already heard from members of his congregation. “What it does show is that antisemitism surfaces often enough, and in ordinary enough settings, that it cannot be dismissed as rare or confined to the margins of society,” he said. “This means that for many, Jewish belonging in Ireland feels more fragile than it should.”
Taoiseach Micheál Martin acknowledged at an International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in January that Ireland’s Jewish community was “experiencing a growing level of antisemitism” and that public discourse had “coarsened.”
The findings are expected to renew calls for the Irish government to introduce a formal, state-level mechanism for monitoring and responding to antisemitic incidents.
