Garda Commissioner warns international far-right activists are trying to stir up trouble in Ireland
The Commissioner said he believed the foreign actors were giving Irish activists bad advice - because they did not know the relationship between people here and gardai
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has warned that far-right activists in Europe and America are getting involved in anti-immigration protests in Ireland.
"There is an international element and organisation to this and that leads into Europe, but also the UK and the USA, as well," the Commissioner said on Thursday.
But, speaking in the wake of last week’s disturbances outside a planned site for 500 mostly Ukrainian refugees in Coolock, north Dublin, the Commissioner said he believed the foreign actors were giving Irish activists bad advice - because they did not know the relationship between people here and gardai.
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The Commissioner made his comments after a public meeting on Thursday of the Policing Authority - an independent oversight body - heard that three gardai were injured during the trouble and one had to be hospitalised.
Gardai have already arrested more than 30 people over the trouble - and the authority meeting heard there is now a major criminal investigation into it.
Speaking after the meeting, Mr Harris said activists from Ireland and abroad were trying to whip up trouble - online and in person.
He said: "It would be our sense certainly in recent weeks that there is activity on the ground.
"Certainly elements in the local community recognise that people are there trying to manipulate them, trying to whip up trouble and disorder and that they are active in doing this.
"Online, we would say there are a couple of dozen individuals who are very active. But they are very active in the international sphere as well.
"There is an international element and organisation to this and that leads into Europe, but also the UK and the USA as well, so that is an active element.
"And you can see that on social media and the social media that develops from these situations."
When pressed on that, the Commissioner told The Irish Mirror that foreign activists were trying to create trouble here - and Ireland was now a focal point for international far-right activity.
He said: "I would say there are actors who are trying to influence what’s happening here in Ireland.
"Ireland has become a centre of attention because of incidents like Coolock and they are seeking to further foment that and to provide their advice in terms of your tactics, what you should do next, your tactics for dealing with law enforcement, as they might say."
But the Commissioner said he believed the foreign activists’ tactics were not working.
Mr Harris said: "What their weakness is they don’t understand the relationship between An Garda Siochana and the public in Ireland.
"They are quite often misplaced in the advice they are providing.
"We put great emphasis on being a community-based policing service. And not only how we manage these events, but how do we de-escalate and maintain a relationship with the local community.
"A lot of their tactics actually, we can defeat through good policing and really good relationships with the local communities."
The Commissioner also said that public disorder at asylum centre sites shouldn't be inevitable and said there are lessons to be learned by other organisations from Coolock.
Gardai came under attack and fires were set several times at the former Crown Paints factory in Coolock which has been earmarked as housing for asylum seekers.
The building is to be renovated to accommodate more than 500 international protection applicants.
Protests were organised at the site by a group called 'Coolock Says No'.
He also said threats to and "unsavoury" statements were being made about gardai online, which they would report to the Director of Public Prosecutions where appropriate.
He said members had come under assault through the use of "various projectiles" and said they dealt with it with "courage and fortitude".
Outlining the timeline of events that led to disorder in Coolock, Mr Harris said on Monday, July 15 the contractor wished to move onto the premises between 3am and 4am, which went off without an incident.
Further protests then took place from around 8.15am and at around 10am the "situation started to turn ugly".
He said a digger and mattresses were burned and a member of the security staff was injured.
A call went out to draw on personnel from across the Dublin Metropolitan Region and Mr Harris said the process for members to "disengage" from what they were doing and travel to Coolock properly equipped "just took time".
He said there were newly-attested gardai at the scene that day, four of whom he met the following day.
He said that by noon, there were some members of the public order unit present. By 1pm, two full public order units were in attendance at the Malahide Road, comprising 50 members, when there were around 100 protesters at the scene.
He said the protesters were a mixture of locals who were genuinely concerned and people "driven by prejudice and extremism".
He continued: "I do think there are lessons to be learned from this. We're going through our own review, but I think there's lessons to be learned by other organisations and other departments in respect of this as well.
"I do not think it's inevitable that on every occasion that we have some of these centres open that it has to be attended with such disorder.
"It is regrettable that we've seen it, and it's regrettable that it seems to be a greater reoccurrence, but I do think it should never be thought of as an inevitable factor of this, it shouldn't be."
He also praised the work of gardai in Coolock in recent days to de-escalate tensions in the aftermath of the disorder.
"Over the last number of evenings, rather than having public order units on the Malahide Road, it has just been a couple of guards, none of them in uniform, and they've been on patrol, they've engaged with the protesters that are there and managed them without huge overt displays of force.
"Protest is a normal activity in a democratic society, what obviously is not acceptable then is where it spills over into violence, crime and criminal damage."
Mr Harris said the Department of Justice and IPAS can learn lessons from recent public order incidents in Coolock.
"We want and are working closely with them," he told reporters after addressing the Policing Authority.
"But I do think there's lessons to be learned in terms of the relationship then also with the contractor and all of those lessons should be learned.
"We do not want to be in a position where, in effect, we find ourselves in a situation which is so heated that violence then carried on from that."
He added: "At the end, we did bear the brunt of it. Actually, we're the ones down on the streets bearing the brunt of it."
Assistant Commissioner Angela Willis said there have been 34 arrests so far in relation to the incident at Crown Paints since July 15, and 26 people charged with 46 charges before the courts.
She said there were eight cautions to adults and juveniles, seven incidents of criminal damage, and six incidents of criminal damage by fire.
Ms Willis said they had been a difficult number of days but she didn't believe that gardai's relationship with the community had been "harmed significantly" as a result.
"We have responded to over 400 protests so far this year, and a handful have caused us problems."
She said that some gardai had body-won cameras and that footage would be used as part of the investigations.
She said 10 members have been tasked with manually trawling through 3,000 hours of CCTV footage from Coolock, and so far 110 hours have been spent going through 68 hours of that footage.
Asked if there was a quicker way of doing this, Mr Harris said: "Within the legislative provisions that we have at the moment, no. We need further legislation to allow us in effect to use software to make digital identification, not just of individuals but of objects."
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