Mr. Drew Harris:

How this will change is this. The core of how we respond is through a human rights approach, which is determined by the Garda decision-making model. What we have done in terms of obtaining the water cannon, in effect gives us more tactics, which we did not have on Thursday night. There is no point in asking Garda members, as was the case on Thursday night, to go from one street where they were under pressure and then to take two streets, of a much similar size, and one which was three times the size, so asking them to go from one spot to take on five times the work and, in doing so, to then move protestors. It was an impossible and forlorn task to ask them to do that. What we have now is an additional tactic, which is the water cannon. It is operationally available here in Dublin for such circumstances. That is the difference. We have an additional tactic that we are able to deploy.

Having said all of that, at the same time, we live in a democratic society and assembly is one of the rights within society. Part of that assembly may be an inconvenience to other members of the public. I think it is accepted practice that some inconvenience can fall upon other members of the public as individual citizens exercise their right to assembly.