Call for ban on protests outside refugee accommodation and people’s homes

Demonstrators should be restricted from staging protests outside people’s homes and close to where refugees are being accommodated, a Dublin city councillor has recommended.

Labour councillor Joe Costello has called for the possibility of banning protesters from such locations and for gardaí to be given powers to prevent people from staging demonstrations in certain areas to counter what he claimed was the new phenomenon of “a lot of marches and a lot of very raucous, angry, intimidatory activity”.

Addressing a meeting of Dublin city’s Joint Policing Committee (JPC) on Monday, Mr Costello said protests outside people’s homes were “an invasion of privacy”.

He added: “It’s an invasion of personal safety. It’s intimidation and we have racism and xenophobia.”

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Sinn Féin councillor Daithí Doolan said he was also deeply concerned about the rise of racism and racist attacks in Ireland.

He said the problem had manifested itself in a number of violent and aggressive attacks recently including a “very, very vicious” incident in a homeless camp in Ashtown, north Dublin on Saturday.

He called for tackling the issue to be made one of the priorities for the work programme of the city’s JPC over the coming year together with domestic violence and drug-related intimidation.

[ Men with dogs, sticks and baseball bat attack Dublin migrant camp ]

Mr Doolan said it would be naive to think the problem of racism in Irish society could be wished away.

He claimed the current level of aggression seen at a number of recent protests would unfortunately remain “for the foreseeable future”.

Assistant Garda Commissioner Angela Willis, who has responsibility for policing in Dublin, said gardaí in the capital had overseen 307 public protests of different types last year with 64 so far in 2023.

Ms Willis said the role of gardaí in policing demonstrations was to facilitate peaceful protests, to prevent injury and to protect life.

She told the JPC that gardaí had the objective of ensuring everyone’s rights were upheld with public safety being maintained regardless of the nature of a protest.

However, the assistant commissioner said there were a number of ongoing investigations into recent protests where the behaviour of participants had gone beyond what reasonable people would consider peaceful.

She said there was a “very fine balance” between the rights of people to protest and their behaviour at such demonstrations.

She told councillors that gardaí had to be measured in their response. “We mightn’t intervene when someone is being disruptive in the middle of a protest.” However, she said this did not mean gardaí “won’t be knocking on your door” sometime later when evidence and information on an incident had been gathered.

“We don’t want to cause a riot situation by trying to arrest people in the course of a protest,” she added.

Ms Willis said such protests represented “a very challenging environment” for all gardaí.

In reply to Cllr Costello’s suggestion, the assistant commissioner said gardaí were limited in what they could do as people had a right to protest in public spaces, so there were effectively “no exclusion zones”.

Independent councillor Mannix Flynn said part of the problem was that local communities were being provided with “misinformation and no information” about the housing of refugees in their areas.

While Ms Willis said gardaí received details from the Department of Justice about accommodation centres for refugees, she did not believe it was a role for gardaí to be providing such information on a “broader” basis.

Meanwhile, the JPC heard there was an overall increase in most categories of crime in the capital last year in line with the easing of restrictions associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Although burglaries were up 11 per cent to 3,705 reported cases last year, Ms Willis said they remained almost 50 per cent below pre-Covid levels.

Gardaí also seized €54 million worth of illicit drugs in Dublin last year together with €6.5 million in cash which was regarded as the proceeds of crime.