Elaine Loughlin: Drew Harris kept his cool in low-temperature justice committee grilling
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris arriving at Leinster House to appear before the Oireachtas justice committee in the wake of the Dublin riots. Picture: Niall Carson/PA
Drew Harris is adamant he is going nowhere, but so too are the far-right thugs who continue to go relatively unmonitored and unpunished.
For a man who presided over a force that was left scrambling for many hours to hold back a riotous mob that looted shops, set fire to buses, and made Dublin’s city centre a no-go area, the Garda Commissioner was doing a pretty good job when he appeared before the justice committee.
But he was helped by a relatively lacklustre committee, which for the most part went through the motions.
That was until Mr Harris admitted that members of the gardaí simply cannot track the social media platforms used by the far-right, and are now asking the public to act as citizen investigators.
He said it is “impossible to suggest that we will know every network” far-right individuals that seek to create chaos are using, noting that “some of them are very difficult to penetrate”.
“We have dedicated members who do look for digital intelligence,” he said. “But we’re not on every network and if individual members of the public come across material online which they feel is offensive then they should report that to gardaí.”
However, Green Party TD Patrick Costello said the evidence the commissioner seems to think is very difficult to track down is readily available.
“I think if you’re looking for evidence, many of it is posted in the social media groups, on the Telegram groups,” he said.
“These people are proud of what they have done, and they’re happy to show it off.”
Pointing to an incident in 2022 when a TD was targeted outside the Dáil, Mr Costello claimed that “because nothing was done, it grew into more significant protests”. He pointed to more recent incidents across the country including Donegal, Westmeath, and Leitrim.
For a long time now, those who have been organising what have spiralled into nasty and dangerous protests including outside the Dáil, have been galvanising support and mobilising mobs through astute use of social media platforms.
Some of these Telegram groups are invite only.
By early evening last Thursday, screengrabs of conversations directing people to wreak havoc and carry out criminal acts in Dublin’s inner city were being widely spread across all social media channels.
And yet Mr Harris is still maintaining that last week’s riots were impossible to predict.
His appearance before the justice committee had been much anticipated, but his trademark level-headed and even-toned approach provided very little for members of the committee to bounce off.
One point that Mr Harris did particularly stress, however, is that he has no intention of standing aside.
Asked by Fine Gael’s Colm Brophy about his response to calls for his resignation, Mr Harris said bluntly: “I am not going to resign. I care too much about this job.
“I have too much work to do, and part of that is responding to this, so I have no intention of resigning.”
Mr Harris comfortably survived his three-hour grilling at the justice committee, but that doesn’t mean the Garda Commissioner is not still under pressure.
