John O’Keeffe

AS the dust begins to settle on the images of slaughter from last Monday’s suicide bombing in Manchester, attention has now turned to police operations on the night in question.

While there has been some criticism of the work practices of Manchester Arena’s private security staff, the police response in the aftermath was believed to have been as successful as it could have been under the circumstances.

Large numbers of both unarmed and subsequently armed police arrived in the area in a matter of moments and a rehearsed disaster plan was immediately followed. This is unsurprising.

While, like Ireland, the majority of the police force in Britain are not routinely armed, officers nonetheless receive tactical firearm training.

They also receive training in disaster management. So, when an incident such as the Manchester bombing occurs, within minutes frontline police had flooded the area, creating a cordon within which the operational armed units could then operate.

The professionalism of the operation may not have been immediately obvious to many of the panic-stricken public there at the time, but such tactics are a critical element in achieving best post-disaster outcomes.

In stark contrast, frontline gardaí are under-equipped, both in terms of training and inventory to deal with any level of attack, and as a result, the consequences could be unimaginable for these men and women, and the general public they serve.

Training

Every trainee garda in Templemore receives basic public order training. However, for most, this will be the last time they will encounter such formal instruction. Unless you are a member of a Public Order Unit in any particular Garda Division, you will only receive further instruction by word of mouth or in a bare overview kind of way, when a specific event is about to be policed. As a result, the majority of frontline gardaí (who make up 81% of the force) will have had no public order training since their student days and if they do – it will be cursory.

The picture is however even bleaker than that. Even upto-date public order training for all gardaí would not fully equip them to deal with the type of Islamist lone-actor attacks we are seeing across Europe – for that they need specialist terror training and none is available for regular units today.

And the situation gets even more farcical; the higher you travel up the Garda hierarchy, the more likely it is that training in terrorist operational duties will have been received. For example, gardaí who work in the Garda Press Office in Garda HQ have had training in terror attacks since 2015.

With respect, if a suicide bomber were to be identified travelling up O’Connell Street in Dublin, it is not a senior officer who will be there but a frontline garda. It is these men and women who will have to put themselves on the line for all of us, and yet it is they who are the least equipped to respond effectively. Specialist teams such as the Armed Response Unit and others have training in disaster management and of course, tactical firearms use.

Yet these make up only a small percentage of the force and are the groups least likely to be the first-responders were such a horror to visit our shores. The officers of the frontline, however, are likely to be the first on the scene.

The Manchester bombing has shone a bright light on the lack of resources made available to frontline gardaí in this country.

Aside from the lack of training to deal with terror attacks, gardaí also have little in their physical armoury to defend, not just themselves, but others, if an attack were to occur here.

Their stab-proof vests are exactly that – essentially illfitting and stab-proof only, and as the vests are now some 11 years in existence, their ability to withstand any sustained ballistic attack is in serious doubt, to say the least.

Furthermore, the frontline gardaí have nothing more than an extendable baton (also in need of updating) and pepper spray (which can often lack accuracy) to demobilise a lone terrorist attack – should they get to one in time.

Tasers are the preserve of small specialist units only – how then is a garda supposed to protect him or herself against a fanatical knife-wielding Islamist terrorist?

As garda numbers were being cut during the recession and their places of work systematically closed down, gardaí were told that they had nothing to fear – it was all about policing smart, not policing by numbers.

Government and Garda management had no empirical evidence to back this up, yet persisted with the theme that it was all a new way of policing. A happy coincidence.

Mindless

Now that Garda numbers are creeping slowly back up to their old insufficient numbers, gardaí are being asked what they are complaining about.

Police Scotland, who serve a population similar in size to Ireland’s, have a force in excess of 17,000 officers – we have, at best, 14,000.

Clearly the Scottish Assembly wasn’t listening to the mantra of less is more – one wonders why.

Much has been said since Monday, by certain commentators in the Irish media, to the effect that we have nothing to fear in this jurisdiction from terror attacks. Apparently Islamist terrorists are not interested in the friendly Irish.

The view continues to be expressed that Islamist terror is a horror that besets only Nato or Nato-partner countries, and jurisdictions such as Ireland have little or nothing to fear.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Such a view is ill-founded and grossly underestimates both the minds of those who are at the centre of the so-called caliphate and Ireland’s preparedness for such attacks.

This country is currently the softest of targets these mindless savages could ever locate. We have a population that has been told by government and liberal commentators that they should move along; that there is no terror to see here.

The pop concert in Manchester was a ‘perfect’ target for Isis operatives as it exhibited so-called ‘casual Western values’. And to the psychologically disordered individual fed on a diet of hatred and exclusion, modern Ireland, with its heady combination of pick-and-mix Christianity alongside galloping consumerism, presents fertile ground for a terror attack.

It is estimated that there are perhaps 50 so-called ‘sleepers’ in Ireland capable of launching a terror attack here and perhaps another 50 ready to imitate.

The UK – a mere 80 kilometres north or east of Dublin city – is now in a state of terror alert marked at its highest level possible. This means we too are now in the frontline – terror after all does not respect borders, or reward cultural complacency and inflated views of immunity.

The truth is that unless this Government provides immediate funding to train and resource its frontline gardaí to protect as best they ever can against such attacks, our own Manchester may be nearer and more horrific than we could ever have imagined.