Videos of protest at Roderic O’Gorman’s home ‘sensationalised’, says garda who was on the scene

Detective Garda Mark Ferris of Blanchardstown Garda Station made the comments while speaking at the annual conference of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) taking place in Westport, Co Mayo.

A gang of up to 12 masked men gathered outside the politician’s home and placards and banners were stretched across his driveway gate, along his wall and fastened to outside poles.

Videos of the incident were circulated online and showed up to a dozen masked men gathered at the property. A large banner was tied across the gate stating “Minister O’Gorman Hates Children” and three other small banners were attached to railings on his front wall.

Taoiseach Simon Harris was among those who criticised the far-right protest, calling them “horrifying”, with criticism from some quarters of the garda response.

Asked why no arrests were made during the incident, Detective Ferris said the videos posted online were not a “true and accurate reflection” of the incident.

“It’s disinformation - because you can clearly see, in the engagements with police, that daylight was just setting and later on in the clip you can see, in daylight, where a number of protesters were putting placards outside the minister’s address.”

He said that gardaí “would have reacted differently if we came upon these protesters”.

“There was no arrestable offence for us there and they were directed to take it away and that’s what they did,” added Mr Ferris, who described the garda response as “reactive”.

Earlier, GRA president Brendan O’Connor said policing such protests is “very complex” and poses major challenges for gardaí involved.

Mr O’Connor, who is a garda based in Co Donegal, pointed out that there is a potential for these type of protests to break out in every village and town in the country and described them as “intense and very, very challenging”.

The GRA president welcomed Taoiseach Simon Harris comments earlier in the day when he questioned whether the laws in place to police protests are robust enough or whether new laws are needed.

Ireland’s rising road death toll also dominated on the opening day of the conference.

Asked about the decision by Garda Commissioner Drew Harris to instruct all uniform gardaí to carry out at least 30 minutes of roads policing activity every working day, the GRA’s general secretary Ronan Slevin said the issue was about resources.

He said the roads policing unit was half the strength it should be and that there is a need for a 1,000 more gardaí overall.

The conference has been overshadowed by the decision of Justice Minister Helen McEntee not to attend the event.

Last week, Minister McEntee said she would not attend the annual conference because Garda Commissioner Drew Harris had not been invited.

That refusal to invite the commissioner came in the wake of the association’s unprecedented vote of no confidence in Mr Harris last year.

Mr Slevin said the minister was still welcome at the conference as there are a number of issues the association would like to highlight to government.

Mr Slevin said the GRA would like McEntee to be more "hands on" with issues.

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The conference also heard that frontline gardaí are still not prepared for a major violent disorder incident such as last November’s Dublin riots.

Deputy general secretary James Morrisroe raised concerns about resources and training in place.

Mr Morrisroe said: "The only way to be ready for that is if you had the numbers and the resources there. I'm not aware of any specific training for the frontline currently.

"If something like that were to happen again, if they had notice of such an event, the public order units from all over the country would be mobilised. "But it will be just a specialist units that will be brought forward.

"You'd be struggling for resources on something on that scale again, definitely.

"Unless frontline gardai had noticed or the resources were there on hand, no they wouldn’t be prepared."