Gardaí being told 'go out and do your best' when dealing with far-right protests
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Frontline gardaí say they are being told to “go out and do your best” when dealing with far-right groups engaged in anti-immigration protests.
The Garda Representative Association said there was a “lack of confidence” among members in responding to the type of scenes that marred Dublin at the weekend.
GRA president Brendan O’Connor said the fundamental problem was “we don’t have enough personnel”, along with a lack of planning and training.
Speaking in Limerick, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he did not believe there were enough gardaí on the streets of Dublin to protect refugees from violent attacks, adding that was why the Government was providing funding it says will allow for 1,000 Garda recruits this year.
Garda management sources told the it was unfair to blame gardaí given the asylum seekers were sleeping in tents on the street for want of State accommodation.
They acknowledged GRA concerns about a lack of staff but defended the “low-key” policy regarding policing protests, saying that if gardaí intervene too soon and make arrests, it would be like “lighting a powder keg”.
Speaking on RTÉ , Justice Minister Simon Harris commended the “very visible Garda presence” at the weekend, saying they “de-escalated what could have been a very serious situation”.
Coming from a meeting with Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, he said “we can always do with more gardaí” but that he was assured by the commissioner.
On Friday night, a camp was burned out on Sandwith St in Dublin’s south inner city after asylum seekers were forced by far-right protesters to abandon it.
A second, larger, camp nearby on Mount St, which has 58 tents, was marched on by a mob of 40-50 people, mostly men, on Saturday afternoon, pulling at and kicking tents and hurling abuse.
Mr O’Connor said: “It’s down to lack of preparedness and planning with the gardaí, based on lack of personnel and training.
“We’re being told ‘go out and do your best’. That’s not good enough. We don’t have enough personnel, we don’t have a plan — it's just ‘we’ll see how it goes’.”
The GRA leader said there was a “lack of confidence” among gardaí in dealing with these protests and said a public order unit should be available.
“I’m not saying I want to see hundreds of guards on the streets with riot gear,” he said.
Mr O'Connor accepted it was difficult for management to assess risks when protests are unplanned or sudden, but added: “If we know there is the potential for violent disorder with racial undertones, there should be sufficient guards on standby.”
One experienced garda source told the that there was a growing feeling Ireland is heading into “dangerous territory” and feared that someone — either a refugee, a garda, or a protester — could be injured or killed.
“We are no strangers to protests in the south city centre,” said the source. “But over the years the bulk of them are planned, we have notice, we have contact. But these guys act anytime. They are stirring up hatred and that kind of protest is new.”
Garda strength is teetering above the 14,000 mark, compared to 14,750 three years ago, because of the impact of covid on recruitment.
Simon Harris said there had been 125 anti-immigration protests in Dublin this year and said a small group of people were travelling around the country “stoking up fear and trying to inflame the situation”.
He added: “What we saw at the weekend was an attempt by a very small number of people to engage in illegality and thuggery to intimidate and endanger people.”