Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. She mentioned earlier the graduated response the Garda uses. The Commissioner used that term as well, but surely the beginning of any graduated response should be prevention. Particularly when dealing with groups that are deliberately organising, the prevention should be looking at and dealing with them. The Minister says that there have been 800 protests this year, that not all of them have been difficult and that there have been some arrests, but not all such protests are organised by violent elements that, in their own words, are at war with the State.

These are violent, dangerous and antidemocratic elements and I am very concerned about the vulnerability of our State because I do not believe we take these people seriously, particularly when they themselves use words like "war" and have been telling us from the very beginning what they want to do. Yes, there have been arrests at protests but I have not seen any arrests for incitement, conspiracy or organising the violence. I have not seen any arrests in respect of the arson attack at the rumoured site of an IPAS centre on Sherrard Street. Because there was no policing response or prevention, we had another arson attack at an IPAS centre in Ballybrack. In the last week, there was an arson attack at an IPAS centre in Rosslare. All the technology and tools we can give An Garda Síochána are useless if we are not policing the right things.

In September 2022, a TD was assaulted. Deputy Paul Murphy was assaulted outside the Dáil. Under the Act, the Minister has the power to establish and revise priorities for policing. She has the power to issue written directives concerning any matter. When a TD was assaulted, which was not normal for this country, was there any revision of priorities or were there any directions concerning the violent elements that were deliberately organising and that assaulted a TD?