Richard Hogan: The Dublin riots show the need for societal change

Those images were emblazoned into my childish mind.

The scenes that took place on the streets of our capital last Thursday, evoked those memories.

For a moment, Dublin was lost. Buses ablaze, the Luas burning, Arnotts ransacked, police cars burnt out live on telly, police officers surrounded and assaulted by young teenagers. 

It was one of the darkest moments in our State’s history. An indelible stain on our international reputation.

We have always thought we are an open people, the country of a thousand welcomes. 

We were the immigrants of the world, so we felt we understood that experience — coming into a new country and trying to build a life for ourselves. 

We have known what it is to be stereotyped, labelled and feared. ‘No dogs, no Irish’.

But if we ever needed a moment to illuminate how things have changed in this country, changed utterly, we got that loud and clear last Thursday night. 

People, including teenage boys engaged in abhorrent, destructive behaviour.

Orchestrated by a few, hell-bent on chaos, lawlessness and looting. There is no ideology behind those scenes.

It was not a demonstration, it was an assault on democracy.

It was the expression, by a few, of a desire towards mayhem and disorder. We must remember that they do not represent the majority of Irish people. 

They are a few, but they are among us. And we need to wake up!

Members of An Garda Síochána are our sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, uncles and aunts, and we have to stop blaming them for the behaviour of others, and we must empower them so that they can protect themselves and the fabric of our society.

I delivered a talk in Templemore last Friday, the morning after the chaos in Dublin, with many young trainee members of An Garda Síochána. 

I listened as they expressed their concern about the job they are about to go off into. The uncertainty of what they will meet and the vitriol they will encounter as they go to work. 

I have been talking with members of the force for many years, at all levels, and have always been struck by their desire to help people. 

They certainly do not go into the profession for money, the wonderful hours and long summer holidays: They want to help people and make a positive impact on the lives of others.

They need our support and they need the support of their chief, Drew Harris. Of course, politicians will use this event to score points. But the population has grown, the issues have changed, and how we police this new phenomenon requires a change in strategy.

An Garda Síochána need better equipment: They should all have cameras. This would have been incredibly valuable on Thursday night. 

We need more gardaí on our streets; we all know this, and we need trained anti-riot police. 

It was clear from the scenes unfolding that this was an unprecedented event, but we must prepare for unprecedented events, so that we know how to react when something unfolds in real time. 

That’s what keeps our streets and members of the force safe, having a strategic plan in place to deal with any eventuality.

While the behaviour of those teenagers ransacking the nation’s capital was disgusting, and needs to be punished to the full extent of the law, we have to look at why those teenagers were there in the first place. 

It is all too easy to label them as ‘scrotes’, ‘scumbags’ or ‘lunatics’, but they are our children and they did not grow up in a vacuum.

We are very good at talking about inclusion in this country, we celebrate some minorities very well, but when it comes to children growing up in poverty, excluded from the educational system with parents caught in addiction, possibly cognitively impaired and unable to parent, we hear very little. The children lost in our State.

If you felt your country didn’t care about you, unloved and unwanted, with parents detached from reality, and with very little hope for the future, how would you respond if someone said, “Let’s go down and rob JD Sports?” 

It’s an uncomfortable question to answer. I am by no means, excusing their behaviour, but there is a wider context to it. 

These are disillusioned, forgotten and angry young teenagers. We have to look at our society and how it treats children of poverty, if we want to truly eradicate this type of behaviour.

I know there are plenty of children in poverty who do not ransack shops, but if you feel powerless in a system that ignores you and offers you no hope, expressing that powerlessness through violence would be alluring.

Again, I am not excusing their behaviour, but I am saying their behaviour is a symptom of a wider issue. 

Those children are easily manipulated by more organised and malevolently motivated groups. 

What we witnessed on our screens was a wake-up call. 

There are a few in our society that want to tear it down. But there are far more of us who believe in democracy and goodness, like Caio Benicio, the immigrant who risked his life to protect the life of innocent children.

There are far more Benicios in the world than those who trampled a crime scene and attempted to burn Dublin. We have to remember that.