‘Wake up, Minister!’ McEntee’s inbox on night of Dublin riots
JUSTICE Minister Helen McEntee was flooded with emails throughout the day of the Dublin riots telling her to ‘wake up’ over her claim the capital is safe, the Irish Daily Mail can reveal.
On November 23 last, hundreds of protesters descended on of O’Connell Street after news of a knife attack which left a five-year-old girl critically injured became known. The protests deteriorated into rioting and looting by nightfall.
Emails obtained by the Irish Daily Mail under freedom of information laws show concerned members of the public wrote to Ms McEntee as the chaos unfolded, decrying the lack of a police presence in the city centre.
One person wrote to the Minister at around 6pm that evening: ‘Minister, do you still think that Dublin is a safe city considering the events in Parnell Square today? You need to wake up and stop talking rubbish.’
Nearly five months earlier, Ms
McEntee walked around Talbot Street in the north inner-city where American tourist Stephen Termini was brutally assaulted and said: ‘Dublin is safe.’
Her comments were roundly criticised by those who contacted her on the day of the riots.
One person wrote: ‘Neither you nor [Garda Commissioner] Drew Harris are capable of keeping our children safe... as a citizen of this country and your employer I demand your resignation with immediate effect.’
A person from Cork emailed to say they had family members who felt safer in the markets of Nairobi, Kenya than on the streets of Dublin due to the presence of drugs.
‘Absolutely devastating news what happened today in Dublin, but sadly only waiting to happen,’ they added.
A ‘Ratoath Resident’ wrote to the Minister that evening as buses, a Luas carriage and Garda cars were burned on O’Connell Street, to say that their son is going to university in Dublin. ‘We are so concerned for his safety not just from today’s incident but for all the reasons that makes Dublin critically unsafe,’ they wrote. ‘You, your party, our Government really need to come out of your bubbles and start protecting us the citizens of Ireland.’
As looting commenced and gardaí were assaulted by rioters, another called on the Minister to ‘take your head out of the sand and see it for what it is. Time to sort out this mess [is] long overdue.’
Another person said the images of the riots were not a good look for Dublin or Ireland and questioned whether there was an ‘intelligence failure’, saying it appeared the gardaí were caught ‘totally unaware’ of the threat from the rioters. One person lambasted Ms McEntee’s own party who have held the justice ministry for 12 years. They said: ‘Fine Gael was always the party of law and order. Sadly, you and the party, have let us down... again!’
Emails continued past midnight as the public responded in real time to the rioting. ‘I have never written to you before but implore you to act soon PLEASE,’ another said, adding that they live in Cork city and never see any gardaí on the street there. ‘What we saw tonight is a bunch of thugs living off the State, who will recover tomorrow from tonight’s “events” with a view to a repeat sometime in the future to fuel their need for a buzz,’ they added.
The public flooded Minister McEntee’s inbox throughout the week. One person told the Minister that the far right had been
‘I demand your resignation’ ‘Looked more like Gotham City’
‘allowed to act openly for over a year now’ both online, in protests and in an arson attack.
Another person said ‘the scenes I saw last night looked more like Gotham city than my home city. It’s heartbreaking’.
The person said they lived in the Smithfield market area and had noticed a ‘definite shift in the atmosphere’ since the pandemic, with gangs of ‘young lads’ and ‘not foreigners’ making them feel afraid to walk home at night.
Some members of the public got in touch to say ‘how amazing’ the gardaí were in protecting the city.
And a retired army veteran in Galway wrote to express their ‘overwhelming support’ for the Minister and the department ‘at this difficult time’.