Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

There are always lessons learned from everything. The kind of thuggery we saw on Saturday last, and the gathering of what probably were different groups, did us harm and shamed the city and the country. There is no doubt about that.

With every march the Garda, when it receives a plan, must look at all the aspects to it and the Minister will point out later the extent to which it did that. The Garda certainly did not take anything lightly. It undertook considerable planning and had many senior people involved. There was an enormous amount of meetings, including with the city council. They were concerned about the site on O'Connell Street. They had six meetings about that issue alone. They had a large number of people in the area. If the Garda and State wanted to have the march and suspected there could be trouble to the extent that occurred, I am sure the march could have taken place because 350 people were available to guard.

In fairness to the organisation involved — Families Acting for Innocent Relatives, which numbers 350 members — the Garda put a huge number of conditions on the members about what they could do, especially regarding anything that might be seen to be provocative. They complied with the conditions and went along with every arrangement. The Garda had a number of meetings with FAIR representatives last week in Dublin and they went through all this.

The Garda checked its intelligence about what was going on. People were loosely talking about a march on the weekend and whether there would be a problem. Following Saturday's events, it became clear texts had been sent and people had been saying there could be trouble. The Garda authorities were in the best position to arrive at a view. They thought there would be a peaceful protest by a small number of people but that number swelled to hundreds. They did not think they would have to deal with hundreds of people, young, old and middle aged, ripping up pavements, boards, public lighting and everything they could get their hands on and unleashing them on top of gardaí, journalists and everybody else who got in the way. It was not seen as that. Who will ever know why a group went to so much trouble to do that against a small number of people?

I am well used to watching demonstrations in my constituency. On the day, three superintendents, ten inspectors, 32 sergeants and more than 300 gardaí and uniformed public order personnel were on duty in the background. The Garda mounted, air support and dog units were deployed while 58 detectives were mixing with the crowd. That is not a normal Saturday afternoon in my constituency. A total of 150 additional gardaí were deployed quickly. Regularly, in another part of my constituency, 80,000 people converge and we would not get a force half that size. On Saturday 350 people were being protected against 70.

Unfortunately, hooligans are hooligans and they did damage. It was organised in some way. We must await the full investigation but the proof it was organised is that people do not move from the Parnell monument to the far side of town in a matter of minutes unless somebody is calling the shots and orders. A small group managed to motivate other misguided hoodlums to participate in their entertainment. Whatever else, my knowledge of inner city life is that 600 or 700 people do not turn up to watch Hearts, a Scottish team, play at 11 in the morning. That was not their motivation.

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