At one point in the long, tense day in Coolock on Monday there were 200 members of an Garda Síochána deployed, along with more than 40 Garda vehicles, most of them seeming to be the large white vans that come screeching into flashpoints, a sure indicator of trouble. Riot police, armed with pepper spray and long batons, were everywhere, and a Garda helicopter flew above.
“I can’t remember a time when I’ve seen so many Garda vehicles in one place,” photographer Padraig O’Reilly posted.
I can’t remember a time when I’ve seen so many Garda vehicles in one place..These are outside Coolock Garda Station in response to todays riots in the Northside Dublin area.. pic.twitter.com/tWGHrUmDKZ
— Padraig O'Reilly Photographer (@padraig_reilly) July 15, 2024
As was the case in Newtownmountkennedy in April, the scene felt almost surreal. It is difficult to believe that this is happening in Ireland: that the government is using brute force to push through a deeply unpopular immigration policy, and is willing to batter its own people into submission in this way.
But the strategy of the battering ram is not just undemocratic, it is also unsustainable. As commentator Keith Redmond noted: “people aren’t consenting to something when you need 200 Gardaí to impose it on them”. Last night, the Gardaí were back in Coolock, ensuring that large concrete barriers were put in place to block access to the site. They enabled those who wanted to build a wall, so to speak, and are maintaining an ongoing presence in the area.
Large concrete barriers erected around Coolock site entrance after violence https://t.co/BOJ1u0wvYr
— DublinLive (@DublinLive) July 16, 2024
It was reported this morning that, nationally, the government is now looking at 30 or more sites to accommodate asylum seekers, whose numbers have almost doubled in the first six months of this year in contrast to the same period in 2023. Right across the country, anger and upset at the imposition of migrant centres is rising. More protests have and will take place. How many Gardaí will be required to quell them all?
Unlike, say, the French, Irish people are slow to protest, and even slower to riot. The enormous frustration of a people who feel that they are ignored and despised is palpable, even as obvious questions are asked about why the government insists on landing hundreds of strangers into communities already feeling the consequences of neglect and indifference.
— Daniel Pawłowski (@pavvlovvsky13) July 15, 2024
The answer is obvious, of course. Coolock, like East Wall and Roscrea, will take what is sent by Roderic O’Gorman or get a slap of a baton, or a blast of pepper-spray in the face, because the people there aren’t important to establishment Ireland. They don’t have useless grievance studies degrees, or work for NGOs, or believe in diversity with the kind of religious fervour previously reserved for the pantheon of holy saints. While tents were quickly moved on from Ballsbridge and Mount Street, the residents of large working class areas or rural towns are meant to quietly accept the decision to house those who occupied said tents in their communities.
As ever, most of the media were more interested in reporting on the thunderous denunciations that followed the unrest in Coolock, with Simon Harris and Helen McEntee and many others condemning “thuggery” and talking about the situation being “hijacked”. They always, you might notice, turn a blind eye – and are allowed by a supplicant media to do so – to their own role in the upset and disorder.
This government, and a complicit Opposition, with some honourable exceptions, insisted on adopting a disastrous immigration policy which threw open our doors and welcomed the world to a country which was already experiencing a housing crisis. That is the real reason for the upset and disturbances being seen in communities across the country, not some far-right bogey men.
Where the people of Coolock were allowed to speak, it was evident their concerns were valid and legitimate. At least 500 strangers – though locals fear it may be more like 1,000 – are set to arrive into their area. It is likely that many, if not most of them, are young men. Considerable numbers will be from cultures that have different norms from our own. Yet when people raise these fears, they are shouted down and called racist.
“It’s going on all over the country and the government are not just not listening,” one articulate woman told Newstalk. “I have a young daughter and I don’t feel its a safe environment for her now. And I also have elderly parents who live just around the corner whom I’m concerned for.”
“I don’t agree with rowdiness, but I think we have a right to protest peacefully,” she added.
“The pepper spray is not good,” Newstalk’s Henry McKean said, almost choking as he recorded his report. “People are in pain.. this is not looking good for society, for community relations.”
“The guards have lost control, but they are trying to regain control in Coolock,” he said.
Its important to understand why the Gardaí were sent in such large numbers to the area – and to understand the purpose of their actions which began with a 4am raid on the Coolock Says No protest camp which was blocking the entrance to the Crown Paint site.
Their mission was to remove the protest and the protesters – and to facilitate trucks and construction equipment were brought on site to allow the development work for a migrant centre to begin on the site. Removing protesters always involves clashes. That’s a given.
Initially, a JCB was set on fire. The hundreds of local people who subsequently arrived up to protest weren’t responsible for that action, but that didn’t seem to matter. They were also blocking the way – and the mission of the Gardaí was to remove obstructers. They were beaten back and pepper-sprayed. Some of the actions of the riot squad in particular which were caught on camera was just appalling.
This assault of a prone individual not resisting is representative of a new, militarised and authoritarian style of policing that has been apparent at IPAS centre demos over the past half year. pic.twitter.com/JgIfoZWnwt
— Dr. Eoin Lenihan (@EoinLenihan) July 15, 2024
Like most people who watched that clip, I have no idea what happened before the gardaí begin to beat a man – who they had already thrown to the ground – with a baton with such force that the thwack of the stick making contact with his body can be clearly heard some distance away. But I know it seems like a wildly disproportionate response. Has Simon Harris anything to say about that “thuggery”?
Another clip that has gone viral captured an extraordinary scene as recently-elected Councillor Patrick Quinlan of the National Party stands in front of a phalanx of riot squad gardaí. He is giving an impassioned speech, but fiery words are not, as of yet, a crime in this country.
Quinlan says he once wanted to join the Gardaí, because he had “that motivation to protect and serve”. He says that local people asked for information and were given nothing. He compares what is happening to the previous plantations in Irish history, saying Irish people were “scattered to the four corners of the earth”. The riot squad, shouting “advance”, move against him en masse, with Gardaí running in a line against a single man.
He is pepper-sprayed, and, momentarily blinded, he bends down to retrieve his glasses. Two Gardaí begin to hit him down the road with enormous riot shields, again and again and again. Quinlan never responds to the repeated thumps of the shields except to turn one time to say “the Irish people have truth on their side”.
@PQuinlanNP gives an impassioned speech towards the Garda after being pepper sprayed and physical assaulted. He is a sitting member of Fingal County Council. He acted in a brave and defiant manner. #coolock #irelandisfull pic.twitter.com/CueSjdDn8L
— Keitho☘️ (@HibernoToronto) July 15, 2024
The policies or history of the National Party are not the issue here. On what basis did the Gardaí pepper-spray an elected representative and batter him down the road in a housing estate in a Dublin suburb? What has shifted in the national psyche to tolerate the spectacle of Gardaí in full riot gear ordering citizens to get into their houses as they did in Newtownmountkennedy? How can this make for effective and community-based policing? It looks more and more like a police state – but only directed against ordinary people who oppose migrant centres. Does their opposition lose citizens the most fundamental civil rights, including the right to protest, without a peep from the bought-and-paid-for supposed civil rights NGOs?
Who authorised the Gardaí to use pepper-spray against immigration protesters in the first instance? As many of the locals observed over the past two days, the choking spray seemed to be used indiscriminately, with videos showing an elderly lady gasping and struggling to breathe – and young teenagers, barely more than children, red-eyed and weepy from the after-effects.
Whatever happened to “mostly peaceful protests”? The heavy-handed tactics by the Gardaí, and the media’s dutiful reporting of Drew Harris’s claims about “disinformation”, are in stark contrast to how the same establishment treated those who protested the killing of George Floyd both in this country and abroad.
Back then, it didn’t seem to matter what laws the protesters were breaking. Under the rules of the Covid lockdown, it was illegal to organise large protests, yet thousands attended the Black Lives Matter protest without any Garda interference. There was no question of anyone being pepper-sprayed or battered down the road, or subsequently facing criminal prosecutions.
The media reporting on that protest was more like a quiet round of applause to the establishment for standing up to, eh, themselves in deciding that that ‘life-saving’ lockdown rules only applied to the proletariat. Similarly, the violence that followed the tragic death of George Nkencho, as protesters rioted in Blanchardstown, was met with a mostly sympathetic response, despite customers in one shop having to lock themselves in against attackers. In that instance, Gardaí said they adopted a hands-off approach to keep the peace. Perhaps they might have considered doing the same on Monday in Coolock.
Where does this policy of adopting an entirely and obviously different approach towards different sections of the community come from? From the Minister? The Cabinet? From Garda Commissioner Drew Harris? We should be looking for answers to these questions.
Again, the Gardaí are moving against people in Coolock in order to uphold a developer’s right to turn a site into an asylum centre. There are the obvious ethical question as to why hundreds of gardaí are being asked to ensure a private, profit-making enterprise can be forced on a community without consent, particularly at a time when parts of Dublin city centre are now seen as “no-go” areas because of a shortage of gardaí, according to one Dublin MEP.
The gardaí are not a private security firm: yet hundreds of them were deployed in Coolock to enable the works for a company named Townbe, which as my colleague Matt Treacy has reported, is a key beneficiary in the Great Asylum Funds Giveaway in which the government has been throwing money about like a bunch of drunken sailors on leave, but not for the purpose of improving the lives of its own people.
Townbe has already pocketed an eye-watering €38 million in taxpayer funds for asylum accommodation. A large fortune is being amassed by a small number of people who don’t even need planning permission to proceed with their plans despite widespread public opposition with huge majorities in polls
But, as Gript Editor, John McGuirk, pointed out on X this week: “If you live in Coolock and somebody in Donegal is building a bungalow, you have the right to lodge a planning objection. If you live in Coolock and Government is proposing a tent encampment in your area for 1,000 migrant males, you have no legal rights at all. Thus, “unrest”.”
If you live in Coolock and somebody in Donegal is building a bungalow, you have the right to lodge a planning objection.
— John McGuirk (@john_mcguirk) July 15, 2024
If you live in Coolock and Government is proposing a tent encampment in your area for 1,000 migrant males, you have no legal rights at all.
Thus, "unrest".
The ordinary rules, across the board, don’t apply when it comes to forcing asylum centres on already over-stretched struggling communities. They are being left without recourse to the ordinary channels of objection and protest. No wonder frustration has reached boiling point.
What was most striking and sad, for me, in the last two days was the resignation and helplessness felt by many people in Coolock, such as this woman who spoke to Fatima Gunning for Gript. “The government won’t be honest with us, they won’t connect with us. We’ve reached out; I’ve reached out to a couple of politicians, they won’t come back to us,” she said. “The government just won’t won’t play ball with us, they don’t really care about us; they set us up all the time and all we’re there for is just to earn money. They take our taxes and just treat us bad.”
She perfectly encapsulated how a growing number of voters feel about their government, and that sense of alienation, of being ignored and held in contempt, should be sending alarm bells ringing in Leinster House. Instead all we hear are tired clichés about law and order from a Cabinet which has lost control of the streets to the extent that a tourist are being stabbed to death in our capital city is shocking but unsurprising.
What does all of this mean for community policing? Previously, Independent TD, Carol Nolan, said “the community consent model of policing is being eroded because of the policing of asylum centre related protests.”
The Laois Offaly TD called on both the Garda Commissioner Drew Harris and the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee to “address concerns that the model of policing by consent, as laid down for An Garda Síochána in its own Policy Documents, is being eroded and undermined by ongoing confrontations between members of the force and members of the public who wish to peacefully protest about the presence of IPAS accommodation centres in their locality”.
She also said that she knew from her own engagement with rank-and-file gardaí “that the very last thing they want to be doing is confronting the women and children and men who want to voice their peaceful concerns. They abhor the level of division and animosity this is creating.”
A video posted to X of riot squad Gardaí entering a McDonalds in Coolock on Monday gave an insight into that growing animosity and the long-term effects that are likely from undermining the important consent model of policing – a model which the left seems happy to abandon when it suits them.
It looks like the riot squad are looking for youngsters involved in the protest. They come into the McDonalds, look around and then leave, but someone – it sounds like a female voice – shouts ‘scumbags’. The gardaí come charging back in, pepper spray drawn, and start asking a group of young men where their food is, demanding to see receipts, and then ordering them out of the restaurant. They had no authority to do so. It was an exercise in humiliation: the kind of punching down that causes lingering dislike and distrust and is wholly corrosive. As more than one person observed, it wouldn’t happen to kids in Howth or Blackrock. A different policing standard applies when Daddy may be a solicitor or Mummy a journalist and able to kick up a fuss about a breach in the social contract.
Just threatened with arrest after this incident. Garda are way out of control! #coolock #irelandisfull pic.twitter.com/wGkv1w0hGL
— Keitho☘️ (@HibernoToronto) July 15, 2024
The video, and others showing similar interactions was met, of course, with plenty of ignorant sneering from the kind of self-described tolerant folk on social media who spent Monday deriding the people of Coolock as “scobies” and “knackers”, and roundly rejecting any suggestion of ‘mostly peaceful’ protesters. Hypocrisy is often the easier path.
Similarly, on the airwaves, the suggestion from Kieran Cuddihy of Newstalk that Tusla should be called in for parents who brought children to the protest was wholly contemptible. It is not the first time that such a despicable proposition has been aired. I cannot think of a more terrifying prospect for a family than that they would be under investigation by an agency which has the power to take their children off them.
But that narrative will eventually change. As happened in Sweden and Denmark, the consequences of uncontrolled immigration eventually spill over from the working class areas expected to just put up with increased crime and integration failure to more middle class communities. The question, in the meantime, is why ordinary people are expected to deal with the fall-out of being forced to accept super-sized migrant centres at the point of a baton.
No-one wants to see missiles thrown at gardaí or anger spill into fighting or violence. But due process actually matters. Policing standards matter. Community engagement matters. Honesty in reporting matters. The right of people not to be brutalised by their own government matters.
I don’t say any of this to be unsympathetic to the Gardaí. I have written previously on this platform that low morale in the force is being driven by a lack of support and training, while resignations are at an all-time high.
But the government is forcing Gardaí to thread a very dangerous line – and to act as attack dogs for a policy that has very little to do with serving the public and protecting communities. Despite the disapproval from the great and good, RTÉ found little support for the government’s plans for the former Crown Paints site.
RTE went to coolock and couldn’t find one person that disagreed with the protesters.
— Toby 🇮🇪 (@ThoughtsToby) July 16, 2024
Change is coming.
pic.twitter.com/BKbFnl3cT1
As Cllr Gavin Pepper said this week, if you keep ignoring the people, you are responsible for the civil unrest that follows. Brute force won’t make asylum centres more popular.