John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

The Minister has not given many details, citing security reasons. I have nothing to go on other than the Minister's assurance that we cannot compare the demonstrations. Only nine people stood in the rain in the middle of the night to demonstrate at Shannon Airport. I hope the Minister accepts that many people will be annoyed to discover that a major security operation was mounted in Shannon to protect one man, albeit the President of the United States and commander-in-chief of US forces in Iraq, while on the other hand there were insufficient gardaí on the streets of Dublin to protect the citizens of the city from a rampaging mob who engaged in wanton violence and caused millions of euro worth of damage to business. Does this not demonstrate that the Minister's priorities are skewed?

Will the Minister tell the House the basis on which he mounted the security operation in Shannon? Did he have prior information that there would be trouble? There was no inkling of it on the Internet. Will the Minister explain how neither he nor the Garda had any inkling of potential violence in Dublin when the Internet was alive with traffic that indicated there would be trouble? The Minister has surveillance of the Internet but this did not require much effort. One need only have looked at the various sites and blogs. Deputy Costello indicated that there could be violence when he spoke in the House. How could the Minister not have a clue what would happen in Dublin when he is the Minister who knows what he knows?

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