Amanda Cassidy: Violence on Dublin streets reduced a little girl's injuries to a 'meanwhile'
A bus and car on fire on O'Connell Street in Dublin city centre after violent scenes unfolded yesterday. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
She should have been snuggling up to watch the Late Late Toy show tonight with her family. Instead, she’s hooked up to hospital machines at a Dublin hospital after emergency surgery, her devastated family holding vigil by her bedside.
Another girl, aged six, continues to receive medical treatment for less serious injuries in CHI Crumlin. A five-year-old boy was discharged from hospital on Thursday evening, and a woman in her 30s remains in a serious condition in the Mater Hospital.
While emergency services were responding to the attack in Dublin's Parnell Square yesterday, not far away, a group had already started to form. The plan: to cause as much damage and chaos as possible in the name of some vapid chants about Ireland being for the Irish.
The shock engendered by the violence and disruption has prompted heightened concern about the rise of this kind of thuggery.
Nobody yet knows the circumstances around why someone would want to hurt innocent children with a knife, but the violence that erupted following the attack on the schoolchildren and their teacher in Parnell Square has overshadowed this tragedy.
We are now talking about the wrong thing. Headlines about the thirty-four arrests made, and the damage done to Dublin city have reduced the little girl’s injuries to a ‘meanwhile’ on the airwaves.
This wasn’t political activism, it was opportunism for a worryingly organised faction to rampage, loot, intimidate and destroy.
A similar air of menace was seen last September when a large group descended on Leinster House, which resulted in public disorder and significant disruption to the business of the Oireachtas.
The harassing and attacking of public representatives was not an ordinary public order incident. It was, as noted by the Ceann Chomairle Seán Ó Fearghail, an attack on democracy.
The catch-cry from leadership is that violence has no place in our society.
Yet, back then, in some of the footage of the Leinster House violence shared widely across social media, the chants from the crowds that ‘this was only the beginning’ gave a clear indication that this was something that was brewing.
Pictures of our capital city ablaze were shared across the world last night, but it was the support of far-right organisations standing alongside those who kicked in shop windows and clashed with law enforcement that should give us chills.
People of all ethnicities describe being terrified of the lawlessness and air of chaos that prevailed last night. The damage to tourism and retailers has yet to be counted.
After the smoke from last night’s riots clears, questions need to be answered.
These questions aren’t just about whether the gardaí could have been more prepared, they are about what comes next? How will our law enforcement be adequately resourced against the rise of this element of radicalism and its disruption to society?
But it’s the image of the pink schoolbag lying at the feet of the child on the pavement that we all saw on social media that lingers. It’s the abhorrent attack on our most innocent that we should be talking about; how that happened and what to do to ensure it can never happen again.
