The event about which I am asking questions was very enjoyable for many hundreds of thousands of people, not only those who attended but also those who watched on television. Only those caught up in the worst of the crushing and the overcrowding which occurred during and after the fireworks display on the Saturday before St. Patrick's Day appreciate how close Dublin came to suffering a tragic disaster. It was not just that inadequate transport and stewarding caused inconvenience and discomfort, many of those caught up in the event thought they would die and feared a Hillsborough-type disaster was imminent.
The event was a great success and thoroughly enjoyed by those who saw it, but the transport arrangements were inadequate and stewarding and policing arrangements after the event almost nonexistent. An estimated 250,000 people attended the event, almost four times the number that would attend an all-Ireland final in Croke Park, yet incredibly no extra public transport appears to have been laid on despite the advertisements in the media encouraging people to use the DART and bus services. Those who left their cars behind had to endure huge queues on the way and long delays on the return journey. Many families with small children did not make it home until almost midnight, and that was after having to endure dangerous and distressing crushing at bus queues and DART stations. The situation at the latter was serious, with dangerous crushing on platforms and inadequate stewarding, leading some to fear they were going to be pushed onto the tracks in the path of oncoming trains.
The stewarding arrangements after the event were equally inadequate as 250,000 people attempted to make their way home. There was serious crushing in parts of the city centre, and I have heard reports of families taking almost an hour to make their way from O'Connell Bridge to Parnell Square. Had the crowd not been so good humoured and controlled, anything could have happened. All it required was for a small number of people to panic or for people to begin to fall to have led to utter disaster.
Since I first raised the matter last week, a number of journalists have written graphically of their frightening experiences which confirm many of the accounts given to me by letter and telephone. Niamh O'Connor reported in Ireland on Sunday:
On Capel Street Bridge, a man had a heart attack. On O'Connell Bridge, a woman thought her baby had stopped breathing. The numbers on the Ha'penny Bridge reached such crowded levels that it will be closed off for the millennium weekend...
At 7.40 p.m. the crowd on O'Connell Bridge turned from a throng into a heaving, seething mass within the space of seconds. Cars and buses were surrounded, drivers and passengers trapped inside. People pushed and shoved and got nowhere...and then there wasn't even enough room to push and shove anymore.
One young woman began to get more and more frantic. She was begging people to please let her through. The ones who bothered to answer said there was nowhere to go.
That is a situation which clearly could have led to serious consequences. There were other reports in The Irish Times and elsewhere from journalists who were on the spot and saw these things for themselves, despite the fact that the organisers, Garda and ambulance services claimed there were no untoward incidents. A report in The Irish Times stated it took an ambulance seven minutes to cross O'Connell Bridge. No one knows why the ambulance was trying to get across at that point. It seems crazy that an emergency service would seek to get through such a crowd when it was apparently on an emergency call. It does not make sense.
Dublin was lucky a serious disaster did not occur last Saturday night week, but we cannot ignore the lessons to be learned. The Department of the Environment and Local Government should now convene a meeting of the Dublin local authorities, the Garda, Dublin Bus and Iarnród Éireann and prepare a major events management plan to ensure that, when events are held in the city centre in future, effective transport and stewarding arrangements are in place to allow them be enjoyed by the public in comfort and safety.
Dublin has become a more lively and enjoyable place in which to live over the past decade. Events such as the parade and the fireworks display are welcome because they provide enjoyment and entertainment and bring people into the city centre, which is good for the business, social and cultural life of the capital. I hope they will continue, but we cannot continue to take the sort of risks which were taken on 13 March. There are other events in the pipeline and the millennium celebrations will bring huge crowds onto the streets at the end of the year. We must act now to ensure that they are not marred by disastrous accidents.
