McDowell commends gardaí
He commended their bravery and hit out at those who were questioning the handling of the operation by gardaí.
“The gardaí have my full backing in these situations,” he said. “There is a tendency in Ireland, at the moment, to consider that the person who is threatening the gardaí and firing at them and the like is the victim and, somehow, that the gardaí are the perpetrators in these situations. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
The minister wished the injured man a full recovery. But he said: “It is a very grave matter to shoot at members of the gardaí. It is also a very grave matter to endanger the lives of other citizens. The gardaí are there to protect us all from those incidents to make sure that there aren’t innocent victims.”
He added: “I want to commend the gardaí for the bravery in the circumstances”.
The minister said the accuracy of less than lethal weapons depended on the range from the target.
“The aim of the gardaí is never to kill; the aim of the gardaí is always to disable somebody and you know, obviously, we will learn from these events. But the important thing is that they had non-lethal weapons available to them, that they deployed them and that they also had whatever weaponry was necessary to ensure that there was not a danger to either their own lives or to lives of the members of the public.”
