‘Barricade incidents’ rarely come to public attention

They only ever reach the wider public’s attention when they are over.

And while only about four so-called barricade incidents have been reported this year, there have in fact been dozens more.

The latest took place on Friday and, like many others, involved a man alone in a house with a legally held gun.

However, also like other such incidents, known as hostage barricade suicidal (HBS) incidents, Friday’s stand-off ended peacefully.

This is due to the work of a number of gardaí and other agencies.

Central to such situations is the work of a small unit in the force, the National Negotiator Unit (NNU), whic is staffed by come of the only full-time police force negotiators in the world.

Members have gone on training courses with New Scotland Yard in Britain, and the FBI’s Hostage and Crisis Unit in Quantico, Virginia.

As well as being An Garda Síochána’s most highly trained and experienced negotiators, they are responsible for the training, refresher training, and deployment of about 75 part-time negotiators throughout the country.

The unit also works with the Department of Foreign Affairs to help Irish citizens abroad who have been kidnapped, become victims of extortion, or are involved in high-level missing persons cases.

In a rare interview, the unit’s lead negotiator, Inspector Tony Ryan, said of the cases he and his colleagues attend: “You remember them all to this day. I wouldn’t want to go into all the details.

“You deal with people from all backgrounds —people with criminal backgrounds, people with mental health issues, people from poor backgrounds.

“But whatever their background, they are all dealing with some crisis. A lot of the incidents we are going to are people with mental health issues and we are dealing with people that want to take their own lives

“We deal with the young and the old, male and female — although it is predominantly males we deal with. And many of those we deal with have never had an encounter with gardaí before.”

The longest HBS incident this year involved a teen who barricaded himself into the family home after his parents took his PlayStation away. The incident lasted 54 hours.