Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will raise the issue of the major public order incident and the riots in Dublin, and the measures taken since then in relation to that.

I know hindsight is great but it seems things came apart that evening.

In terms of An Garda Síochána's structures and units, a special tactics and operations command unit was established in 2017. Of particular concern, and someone showed it to me on social media at the time, was one incident in which there was a garda in a small Ford Escort van or something like that and a group surrounded it and they were going to burn the van. There was a garda in the passenger seat. That is what it looked like in the clip on social media. The driver had gone up the road to attend to something else so the garda who was the passenger was alone in the vehicle. You could hear the conversation and the shouting between those who were going to burn it. The only thing that saved it was that there was someone in the back whom they knew and were associated with. There was a prisoner in the secure area in the back.

There were a couple more incidents. There was one also on social media of a garda standing near what looked like O'Connell Bridge. He was left in a situation in which he did not seem to have a baton or anything and was left isolated, on his own, surrounded by a crowd and caught in a very difficult situation. There was another incident in which two gardaí cycled right into the middle of the whole thing. The bicycles were literally taken off them and they had to flee into a licensed premises for their own safety.

I want to try to be fair. I know, particularly in a riot situation, you cannot plan for what is going to happen because things evolve, change, escalate quickly and dangerous situations can arise in which people may have to move around. Rank-and-file gardaí told me they contacted each other on WhatsApp and their own mobile phones and that people were, without any command or structure, basically being urged by their colleagues in the Dublin area to get into Dublin because they needed help. People answered that call, including people who were off duty. I do not mean this in a smart way but I have seen the Garda being very effective at policing situations and generally there is good policing of demonstrations and protests. It works grand and there is a bit of co-operation between the organisers and the Garda. Where there is the level of violence we saw that day, if there is a special tactics and operations command unit which was established in 2017, what happened on that day that there seemed to be no co-ordination? There did not seem to be any kind of co-ordination or strategy to try to deal with or get on top of the situation. Gardaí were without equipment. Who sent gardaí into those situations where they were left isolated like that, on their own?