Attacks on gardaí: The uniform is now ‘like a red rag’

When the news emerged over Easter about two sets of gardaí being attacked by groups of men in Dublin and Mayo, Dave Haughney was thrust back to a dark night in rural Cork two and a half years ago.

Every aspect of the Garda sergeant’s life changed in a moment of savagery. It’s there every time he opens his eyes in the morning. The 50-year-old with almost three decades of service lost more than three-quarters of the vision in one eye in a gang attack.

Haughney's skull fractured, he was knocked unconscious and his eyes swelled shut for three days

His description of the assault, on December 14th, 2014, is a frightening insight into the violence that gardaí seem to be facing ever more frequently. Haughney was hit in the face by a rock. His skull fractured, he was knocked unconscious and his eyes swelled so badly that they were “completely shut and couldn’t even be examined for three days”.

Haughney believes that, had his partner that night, Garda John Tarrant, not drawn his baton to deter his attackers, he would have died.

Dublin estate agent must pay €3,000 for refusing single mother

---

Boy (13) to face trial on charge of hijacking car

---

Killorglin man killed in 2012 may have been struck with hammer head

---

The two gardaí, who were based in Youghal, had been sent to check reports of men acting suspiciously on a back road outside the town. When they arrived they saw 20-year-old Luke Quilligan and his 22-year-old brother, John Quilligan, walking along the road. When they stopped to talk to the men a car reversed into the driveway of a nearby house. After Haughney and Tarrant tried to block it, the Quilligans – now joined by another brother – attacked them.

“I remember ducking loads of stones,” Haughney says of the first volley of missiles. He was also fending off another attacker, who was “putting his fists up and saying, ‘C’mon, I’ll f**king get you’ – that kind of thing.”

“The pain was unreal”

In the pitch dark, as stones rained down on Haughney and the Garda car, one caught him full force on the side of the head, close to his left eye. “The pain was unreal. You think it’s going to be like a film, and in a moment like that you’ll say something brilliant. But the only words I could manage were, ‘John, I’m gone. I’m gone.’ I collapsed on the ground, and that was the last thing I could remember for a long, long time. I was out for between five and 10 minutes.

“The first thing I remember after that was coming to and looking up and seeing John Tarrant standing over me. He had his baton drawn, and he was holding them back. If John hadn’t done that, and kept them off me, I don’t think I would be around today to talk about it.”

The brothers and the woman who had been driving the car then sped away as Haughney and Tarrant waited for back-up and for an ambulance. The group were tracked to their home in Ballymartin, Dungourney, where, during a four-hour stand-off, the Quilligans’ father, Simon, also attacked gardaí. Two armed-support units used a range of nonlethal weapons, including stun guns; the Quilligans armed themselves with slash hooks and shovels. When the case went to court Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin said it had been an appalling night of violence. The sentences ranged from five years to suspended terms of imprisonment.

Off work for 11 months

Haughney’s eyes swelled shut before the ambulance arrived. He was treated at Cork University Hospital for five days and was off work for 11 months.

He later learned that, rather than alert the Garda, another driver who saw the attack filmed it on his phone – and in the weeks that followed was “showing the video to friends of his, in a pub, for their amusement”.

Haughney’s skull was fractured “from up into my forehead down into my face”; macular damage meant he has lost about 80 per cent of the vision in his left eye. “Everything is a blur, and your depth perception is gone,” he says.

The garda has been restricted mostly to administrative duties since the attack; before it he had been “hands on, active, never a pen pusher”, and trained colleagues in the use of pepper spray and the extendable baton.

The job just isn't the same for me now. Things I loved doing before I just can't do now. That's the killer

Haughney once hoped to serve overseas with the United Nations, as many Garda members do, but that is no longer an option. After 26 years’ service he has decided to retire as soon as has spent 30 years in the force, when he will qualify for a full pension. He doesn’t want to “go early”, he says, “but the job just isn’t the same for me now. Things I loved doing before I just can’t do now. That’s the killer.”

As a garda, he says, it was hard to accept that he needed counselling. “You don’t want to be regarded as a victim. People look at you as somebody who can come and help. That’s the job I always wanted. And for me to wear the uniform is an honourable thing. So when you’re the one who’s hurt, and depending on others, you don’t feel as whole as you could possibly be.”

Gardaí hospitalised

In the unrelated attacks in Dublin and Co Mayo last weekend, four gardaí were hospitalised after being attacked as they responded to call-outs in the early hours. Haughney says such incidents are not uncommon. Other gardaí who speak to The Irish Times this week welcome the attention the pair of attacks have generated but wonder why these two incidents, of several hundred each year, have made the headlines.

The Garda Representative Association has been critical of the absence of up-to-date statistics about attacks on its members. It believes that about 1,300 gardaí have been injured in the past six years – the vast majority in assaults – with about 260 of them hurt last year. It says that although injured gardaí are paid during sick leave, they’re not guaranteed to receive their full pay if they need a long time to recover.

Haughney says the Garda uniform no longer protects the men and women who wear it from attack in the way it has mostly done in the past. The “vast majority of people are great”, he stresses, but for a small section of society the uniform is now “like a red rag to a bull” – and some people are more determined than ever “not to be told what to do”, he says. “It doesn’t sit well with them. And I think there’s also an attitude: ‘I was drunk or I was drugged, so what I did doesn’t really matter’.”

Declining confidence?

Some gardaí believe that recent controversies in the Garda have undermined confidence in and respect for the force. But Haughney says most people look past that. “They treat you as an individual rather than part of a group. They know Dave Haughney hasn’t been the person up before the Public Accounts Committee.

People know Dave Haughney hasn't been the person up before the Public Accounts Committee

“I have always believed in the power of one, anyway. There is a lot of reform you can do by looking to yourself and your own actions. And you can really only account for you own actions. You don’t tend to think of the national problems when you’re working: the controversies and the need for reform in the Garda. You think more in terms of how you support the people working next to you and the people you meet.”

But his injuries have undermined his ability to provide physical back-up for his colleagues. “When you can’t think on that level it makes it very difficult. Your whole belief system is turned upside down.”