A county councillor in Leitrim has refused to apologise for repeatedly using the n-word at a local meeting this week.
Cllr Des Guckian was asked to withdraw the racist word, but he refused to do so.
He made the remarks after he raised issues on road repairs at a municipal meeting of Carrick-on-Shannon councillors.
Speaking on Ocean FM, the independent councillor said that he used the language to show that people in his area were being treated as second class citizens…
He said: "What I said was far from a racial slur, there was no slur whatsoever intended but the very opposite and I don’t know how any person could mis-interpret what I said.
"I was talking about downtrodden people in the United States, I referred to ourselves as downtrodden here, where our interests are being totally ignored by council officials and indeed the councillors who are elected by these very people."