Irish Examiner view: Minority can’t ruin the party for everyone

Outdoor summer gets off to a rocky start

Gardai with riot shields move in to disperse crowds on Anne Street South in Dublin City following disturbances on Saturday night. Picture: Damien Storan

The abiding image of the start of our long-awaited outdoor summer will be one of the gardaí in riot gear clearing the streets of Dublin city centre over the bank holiday weekend. To say that it was not the opening we had hoped for is the understatement of the pandemic.

Instead of the spirit of celebration that might have greeted the return of outdoor dining today, we are left discussing public-order arrests, criminal damage and the disquieting news that gardaí believe a group of around 200 young people were behind the antisocial behaviour on the streets of the capital.

A small group cannot be allowed to turn our public spaces into no-go areas, effectively imposing a new lockdown on those afraid to venture into a powder-keg atmosphere. Pedestrians and would-be shoppers have already spoken of feeling unsafe in a threatening environment. And what of the shop-owners and businesses who are desperately trying to make up for lost revenue after months of closure?

This must be an outdoor summer for everyone. The authorities, however, should have made sure it was so. Scenes on Dublin’s street show how ill-prepared they were for a predictable surge in crowd numbers. They also highlight the lack of public spaces for our young people. If you want to move socialising outside, you have to prepare for that.

The events we witnessed over the last few days also reveal something else; our ambivalent attitude to alcohol and a willingness to accept public drunkenness as the inevitable response to the end of lockdown.

If the need for riot shields on our streets is sad, it is sadder still to think that throwing bottles at gardaí, littering streets, and gathering in large, potentially Covid-spreading crowds is a reasonable way to release pent-up energy. Letting off steam should not mean ruining the party for everyone.

Young people have suffered during this pandemic. All the more, perhaps, as many of them are locked out of the property market and don’t have the space, inside or out, to socialise as others do. It is their right to celebrate now. No question about that, but not at the expense of others.

The pandemic has been hardest on the people who have lost loved ones, been unable to sit with dying relatives or who have been confined to their homes for more than a year. They must feel safe on the streets too.

Let us hope that the summer ahead will not be characterised by an ongoing debate on how to strike a balance between returning our cities and towns to their pre-Covid selves and ensuring they do not look like festival venues, throbbing with party-goers.

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has urged the Irish public to spend big this summer and use some of the €12bn amassed in household savings on clothes, nights out, and weekends away. Surely we can do that in a way that does not put others at risk.

An outdoor summer should be joyful, celebratory, and, most importantly, open to everyone.