| Violence is not the answer
By Joe Horgan
THERE’S rarely any legitimate excuse for violence and it’s
hard to think of any mitigating circumstances for the ugly scenes which
scarred Dublin over the weekend.
Hundreds of rioters bombarded gardaí with pick-axes, scaffolding
polls, petrol bombs, snooker balls and seemingly anything else they could
get their hands on.
It took hours to bring the trouble under control and when it finally was
shopkeepers and civic leaders were left looking at a bill estimated at
£8million.
Almost unanimously eyewitnesses have praised gardaí for their bravery
in tackling the troublemakers.
But rightly questions have been raised about why senior officers failed
to anticipate the trouble.
It is almost unbelievable that gardaí failed to realise a march
by Loyalists entitled Love Ulster passing down O’Connell Street
and right in front of the GPO would have trouble taking place without
attracting some sort of hostility.
It doesn’t excuse what happened — but you surely senior figures
within garda ranks should have recognised the very nature of the march
and those taking part would be seen as a provocative act by certain sections
of the population in Dublin that day.
If they didn’t then you have to question if they really know what
they’re doing.
And if they did, then why didn’t they do something about it in advance?
For if they had then perhaps the centre of Dublin would not have resembled
a war zone on Sunday morning.
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