Gunboat takes aim at democracy

THE disconnect between the Government and the citizens whose interests it has been elected to represent has been strikingly illustrated by the recent astoundingly coercive measure taken against the Shell to Sea protesters.

Although the navy was never once deployed to protect Irish fishermen whose boats were being rammed by bigger foreign vessels and, in fact, contended that it had no right to do so, the Government sees fit to deploy a navy gunboat to ‘protect’ a multinational company from peaceful protesters.

So, on the one hand, the navy cannot protect Irish fishermen earning their livelihoods in our territorial waters, where the Government has ceded a substantial portion of our national assets to third parties, but on the other hand it ‘protects’ a multinational to which it has again ceded a portion of our national assets against unarmed Irish citizens living in and depending on the area for their livelihoods.