‘An insult to all of us who’ve put our lives on hold’
MINISTER for Justice Helen McEntee has called Saturday’s violent anti-lockdown riot an ‘insult to the huge amount of work’ done by the general public who have put their lives on hold to control the virus.
Ms McEntee told RTÉ’s This Week she was ‘appalled’ by the scenes in Dublin.
‘A lot of people who were there were with the sole intent of causing disruption and causing harm,’ she said.
‘They caused harm. There were a number of gardaí who ended up in hospital.
‘We had a broken ankle, perforated eardrum, we had a member who was thrown off a horse.
‘These people do not get up and go to work every day, they haven’t spent the last year standing in cold weather on the side of the road, doing everything to keep us safe, for something like yesterday to happen.
‘I think like a lot of people, I am appalled by what happened yesterday. I don’t think we should be getting caught up in which grouping, what person was connected.’
Ms McEntee said many of those in Dublin had travelled into the city in breach of lockdown guidelines and would be hit with fixed notice penalties.
‘We’re all frustrated, we’re a year now living with Covid, but people used that yesterday as an excuse for bad behaviour and it’s simply not acceptable.’
She said the gardaí have procedures to handle such incidents and are tasked with policing them as they see fit, and she congratulated them for their ‘professionalism’.
‘There was a policing plan in place, that plan was activated, and I really do have to commend the professionalism and the way in which the gardaí on duty responded with great control, but also great discipline on what was a very challenging situation,’ she added.
SENIOR Government figures have conceded that unless they improve their communications with the electorate, the possibility of demonstrations by ‘ordinary decent citizens’ rather than Saturday’s ‘sinister fringe’ are high.
The concession comes amid the recognition that the Coalition’s communications strategy has failed, with Tánaiste Leo Varadkar telling Newstalk’s On The Record that attacks on the communications strategy by his party’s TDs were, ‘fair criticism, in my view’.
Mr Varadkar added that as they have a sustainable plan, ‘we now have a responsibility to communicate this’.
The Tánaiste’s warning came against a backdrop where, even before the Grafton Street riot, an ongoing failure of communications has, according to the polls, eroded public consent for the Government’s pandemic strategy.
All parties agreed that the Grafton Street event was a riot rather than a protest.
However, the level of violence has accelerated growing concerns within Government over the level of public alienation and the potential for some event to be the catalyst for civil disobedience. One senior minister warned: ‘Protests by a sinister lunatic fringe are not our concern. We are more worried about the potential for silent acts of civil disobedience or that we will have some reprise of the water charges, where ordinary decent citizens will say they have had enough.’ Or, worse still, they added: ‘The voters will just walk away, they will do the Irish thing of saying they support the Government’s measures, while simply ignoring them.’
The warning came against a backdrop where ministers across Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil believe that public compliance is at a tipping point.
Significantly, ministers in both main Government parties believe that the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, should ‘pick up the slack, talk to the people and bring them with him’.
Unease is also growing in Fianna Fáil that, ‘the problem is Micheál. This is Micheál’s communications meltdown.
‘It begins and ends with the Taoiseach. Everything else is window dressing.’
The Taoiseach, they said, ‘will have to find a better method of communications than the current “Micheál-splaining”. If he doesn’t, the next demonstrations may be by ordinary decent citizens rather than the sinister fringe’.