I thank you, Sir, for having given me the opportunity to raise this matter. With your permission, I propose to speak for ten minutes. Deputy FitzGerald wishes to contribute as does the leader of my party. They will have five minutes each and this will still leave the Minister ten minutes in which to reply.
In the short time I have, I wish to raise the violence and the civil disturbance and damage to public and private property that have occurred in the general central areas of this city in recent weeks, particularly in recent evenings. We have now here a situation in which the main thoroughfares of the city have witnessed vicious so called demonstrations. O'Connell Street, Stephen's Green, Dawson Street, parts of Merrion Square, North Earl Street and Abbey Street, just to mention some of them, last night bore the brunt of this vicious form of violence, and it is necessary and appropriate that in this House the political parties and the Government should record in no uncertain terms our condemnation of this type of activity and place on record our determination that the people of Dublin and of the country visiting Dublin, visitors to our city from at home and abroad, will have the right to the freedom and enjoyment to walk and to drive through the streets of Dublin in a peaceful and normal way.
Virtually every business in Dublin has suffered from that kind of vicious behaviour. I am chairman of Dublin County Council. The offices which the council occupy fronting O'Connell Street had just one brick thrown through the plate glass window and the cost today just to replace that glass will be £600 to the taxpayer. That is for one large plate glass window. We can reckon, accordingly, that tens of thousands of pounds of damage has been brought about this activity.
I want to lay at rest the kind of shrugging off by some people of their responsibility for what has been happening. It is alleged that this has been done by merely a hooligan element latching on to so-called peaceful demonstrations. I do not think I could give a better authority than a high ranking Garda officer, quoted tonight in the Evening Herald. He said:
People of considerable influence are gathering around them highly suspect people and doing nothing to restrain them. They brought petrol bombs, some of them laced with sugar, that would stick to bodies. They brought golf balls and missiles into O'Connell Street.
He went on to say, and I thoroughly agree with his observations:
The organisers try to slide away from their responsibility by saying these are breakaway groups, but they are responsible for every man, woman and child who gather behind their banners.
This top ranking Garda officer went on:
Meetings have been held throughout the city and the suburbs to recruit the rowdies to create havoc in Dublin.
It is necessary to put that kind of protest on record here. In so doing I want to say that whether it happens in Dublin city or in the constituency I represent, Dún Laoghaire, those of us who make this kind of protest are entitled to do so without having, as happened to me when I protested about the depredation to a public monument in Dún Laoghaire, our families threatened. I pay tribute to the Garda who did their utmost in difficult circumstances, many of them got injured, to try to restrain this kind of thuggery. Those armchair generals, who hide behind the facade of public meetings hoping the situation will get out of hand slowly, should know that Dáil Éireann said they can put their opinions where their mouths are and if they want to stand in a general election and face the electorate for the kind of so-called political demonstration they represent, they will have the opportunity in the near future.
I urge the Minister strongly to ensure that every possible effort will be made in a democratic way to prevent this kind of violence being continued in our city. On many occasions I have spoken at political meetings at the GPO and I cherish the right of the citizens of Dublin and the country to assemble in a peaceful, calm and rational manner to state their political views, no matter how extreme their views may be, but I draw the line when people foment a degree of violence and then slide away from responsibility for it.
The damage to tourism, I can say from my certain knowledge, by way of cancellation of hundreds of bookings in Dublin city hotels, and the damage to central city trading, can be reckoned in hundreds of thousands of pounds. I urge the Minister to ensure, through normal, fair and democratic enforcement of civilised activity, whether demonstrations, parades or marches, that this kind of vicious violence will not be allowed to recur.
That is why I raised this matter this evening. I raised it because the matter could get quite serious and we must not slide away in any way from our responsibilities. I know the Minister has already spoken in reply to a question raised by Deputy Mitchell about the CIE buses and so on. But it does require a necessary degree of repetition and reiteration of our rejection and condemnation and abhorrence of that kind of activity of anybody, irrespective of political beliefs, in this city last evening and the evenings past.
