Drew Harris defends Covid policing after students complain of heavy-handedness

'I don’t make any particular apologies for dealing with situations which we regarded as being high risk,' said Garda Commissioner Drew Harris. Picture: RollingNews.ie

The garda commissioner has robustly defended the enforcement of public health regulations following complaints from some student leaders about “aggressive policing” during the pandemic.

“I don’t make any particular apologies for dealing with situations which we regarded as being high risk,” Drew Harris said.

He was responding to questions from Policing Authority member, Paul Mageean, who referred to what he described as “quite a marked deterioration in feedback” from student leaders about their interaction with gardaí in recent months.

While Mr Mageean did not refer to specific areas, gardaí had to respond to a number of gatherings involving students in Limerick City and in Cork City.  

Gardaí had to break up parties 

Last summer, gardaí had to break up dozens of house parties in the student rental areas around University College Cork.

And in early March, gardaí seized almost €18,000 worth of cocaine after street parties in the Castletroy area near the University of Limerick.

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Mr Mageean said student leaders in one particular area had raised concerns with the Policing Authority about what he described as “quite aggressive policing” and “aggressive interaction with individual members”, as well as unjustified and perhaps unlawful entering of houses.

Mr Harris said people must reflect on the “deep public health crisis” that existed around Christmas and particularly in January, and the behaviour that young people engaged in, such as attending house parties.

Covid rules and criminal laws breached

As well as beaches of the Covid regulations, he said there were also breaches of criminal law, with illegal drugs and vehicles seized in some cases.

He said some students should question their behaviour given the crisis the country faced: 

Their behaviour was entirely irresponsible and we had to, and were obliged to, police that in response to public concerns and public complaints and also what the government required of us.

“When you stretch your mind back to January and the real crisis that we faced and the pressure there was on us around the management of the regulations and managing the behaviour within the regulations by the policing of the regulations, that did put a lot of pressure on us to respond to various complaints and try and bring in behaviour which probably became prevalent in the run-up to Christmas, to bring that back into some kind of compliance with the regulations,” Mr Harris said.  

Consistency of policing

Mr Mageean also said that, following Policing Authority engagement with civic society, a “theme of concern” about inconsistencies in policing of the Covid regulations had emerged.

He referred specifically to the garda raid on a Mass in Athlone last Sunday, while hours later, hundreds of young people gathered in Salthill with apparently no garda intervention.

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Mr Harris said: “I don’t think we’re comparing apples with apples.” 

While there were breaches of the Covid regulations at Salthill, he said the public order situation outweighed the public health element:  

The gardaí on scene dealt with it as appropriately as they could given the resources available. 

"We weren’t able to bring the resources to bear to effectively deal with a public order issue situation,” he said.

And while he did not comment specifically on the Mass, he said indoor events create their own risk and that gardaí applied the regulations as they believed they should be applied.