Such unusual urgency

IT is hard to think of another issue that was so very quickly brought before an Oireachtas committee as last Wednesday’s anti-water-charge protests at Leinster House that involved delays for some politicians leaving or entering the Houses of the Oireachtas.

Yesterday afternoon, less than 48 hours after the incident, Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan told the Dáil Committee on Procedure and Privileges that a number of issues arising from the protest were being investigated.

One of those must be the unacceptable levels of aggression faced by gardaí. If the provocation so easily found on social media is reflective of anti-water-charge protests, it is a wonder that our police force has remained so calm.

The right to protest is a privilege that seems to have been abused on this issue and it may only be a matter of time before these protesters provoke the kind of response that might, as they so obviously wish, cast them as martyrs downtrodden by a brutal State.

How wrong they would be. And how wrong it is that our State did not address rogue bankers with anything like the urgency they have brought to this relatively minor matter.