Last Thursday’s riots in Dublin, and the brutal attack which preceded them, have political consequences that will be difficult to contain.
The images of burning buses and Garda vehicles will define public perceptions of the effectiveness of the State at maintaining law and order, and those with operational and political responsibility – Garda Commissioner Drew Harris and Minister for Justice Helen McEntee – are facing sustained scrutiny and pressure.
The first challenge will be to justify the policing response last Thursday. This will be at an overall, strategic level, where they will have to defend the graduated response – colloquially, “softly, softly approach” – to policing far-right protests, but also about tactical decisions made last week.
The Oireachtas Justice Committee is looking to have both Harris and McEntee in as soon this week. Chair James Lawless said on Sunday that it could happen as quickly as Thursday – if not, the following week. The risk of a new piece of information emerging that casts the policing of the riot in a still worse light is a live one – as is the ongoing problem of further disturbances breaking out. Either of those things could ratchet up the pressure on both Harris and McEntee.
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Politically, McEntee is already facing calls to resign from both Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats. There is a frustration in parts of Government over her immediate handling of the riots, and a concern that her insistence that Dublin’s streets are safe will become increasingly hard to defend. But for now at least, there is no drumbeat in the senior echelons of Government for her to actually resign. She may face a motion of no confidence – but Government sources are bullish on defending it, and confident in their own retort that the Opposition is looking to politicise the matter while a five-year-old girl and her carer remain gravely ill in hospital.
In truth, most motions of no confidence end up relieving pressure on Ministers as controversy builds to a crescendo and then subsides once the vote is won. The Opposition does not speak with one voice on this: on Sunday, Labour’s justice spokesman Aodhán Ó Ríordáin said while the party has no confidence in the Government’s justice policies, the focus should be on the far right that “calling for resignations at this juncture distracts from that focus and gives them exactly what they want”. The Opposition and Government also have a common problem, in trying to position themselves as migration and its political fallout becomes more mainstream, and pressure continues on the State’s capacity to accommodate refugees and asylum seekers.
Riot response a major challenge for McEntee
Confidence motion or not, the crisis will continue to set the political pace. Alongside justice committee hearings, the issue will dominate proceedings in the Dáil this week, where McEntee is due to take Leaders’ Questions on Wednesday in Leo Varadkar’s absence. Intra-Coalition tensions will play out in the background: McEntee’s record on law and order, in particular on safety in Dublin, has already been a target for months of restive Fianna Fáil backbenchers, while the Greens will closely watch plans to expand work on legislation covering the use of facial recognition technology, which caused a row between them and Fine Gael this summer.
In truth though, the real political damage is more fundamental and at a more basic level. New legislation, new equipment and new policies are one thing, but law and order is a first principles, bread-and-butter political issue. It is also one that neatly distils down into metrics that are easy to understand and weaponise, like failure to hit targets for Garda boots on the ground. Coalition sources fear that the riots will catapult law and order right to the centre of the agenda, taking its place next to housing and health as the political system readies itself for elections. McEntee now faces a defining moment in her ministerial and political career so far – one that will have far-reaching consequences for the Coalition and politics more generally.
