Give thanks for our good and gentle gardai

Fiona O’Connell

BEST of luck to all the candidates hoping to break into the Aras to become our next president. Though it seems the die is cast in this country town, with posters advertising a table quiz for supporters of Michael D depicting him as a pint-sized Saint Patrick.

Certainly, Higgins banished any notion that a break-in to the Aras last month by a protester bothered him. “At my age and with my experience, why would I be startled?” was his response.

Higgins and the gardai allowed the woman to drive back out of the Aras. Which is why I love Ireland. In other parts of the world, she would have been shot dead.

Because while security is obviously crucial, do we really want the heavyhanded approach, advocated by some politicians who criticised gardai for being too lenient?

They should save their concern for our endangered little hare that is currently being savagely abused once again, thanks to them blocking a ban on hare coursing last year. While the recent vindication of Maurice McCabe maybe makes it timely to give thanks for the gentle men and women who make up the majority of An Garda Siochana.

As reflected by the report by Mr Justice Peter Charleton, which stated: “Sgt McCabe is a genuine person who at all times had the interests of the people of Ireland uppermost in his mind.”

Significantly, Charleton said McCabe “regarded those interests as superior to any loyalty which he had to the police force of the State”, going on to add “neither interest should ever be in conflict”.

For that loyalty is largely reciprocated and distinguishes us from many other societies, who refer to their police by ignoble nicknames such as ‘filth’, ‘pigs’ or ‘scum’. Here, most of us simply call them the gardai. Maybe the Irish word reminds us that their authority is not put upon us but from us. Maybe it’s the lack of guns or the way most gardai seem approachable.

This is evident in recent tragedies involving gardai that left their communities grieving alongside the immediate families. When “gentle giant” Garda Shane Cuffe, was found dead at Clifden garda station last Easter Monday, so many mourners turned out to pay their respects his funeral had to be moved from his home parish of Moycullen to Galway Cathedral.

And three years ago this month more than 4,000 gardai joined devastated locals on the streets of Blackrock, Co Louth, to follow the coffin of their slain colleague Tony Golden, who was gunned down as he tried to protect two civilians. Father Keenan reminded the congregation that Tony was the 88th garda to die protecting his people. “As one person from Omeath put it to me in recent days, he was ‘our garda’.”

Which is why I’m grateful for gardai who give a woman who breaks into the office that symbolises our State a break.

And for a president who wouldn’t accept praise for treating a protester from the people he represents with decency.