THE GARDA COMMISSIONER has said it would be “highly surprising” if the EU Presidency passes without a major policing incident. 

Justin Kelly, speaking at a press conference this morning, said also that foreign police and security forces have arrived in Ireland to assist gardaí secure events in Dublin and in Cork. 

Kelly said that much of the foreign officers will not be seen by the public and were involved in specialist areas. The Journal understands many of them will be involved in counter drone monitoring. 

The opening ceremony of Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union takes place in Dublin on Wednesday. There will then be a major meeting of the College of Commissioners in Cork on Thursday and Friday. 

Hundreds of gardaí and military personnel will be involved and as revealed by The Journal this will involve a French naval frigate and a number of security forces from abroad. 

Kelly said it will be the biggest security operation in the history of the State and the garda organisation has been planning for it for the last two years. 

As part of that garda officers have travelled to other EU countries to determine what is needed to secure the event. 

The Commissioner said that gardaí have worked with local authorities to build road blocks that will prevent a vehicle ramming attack.

Kelly warned protesters that the organisation will take “robust enforcement action” against protesters who seek to disrupt the events.

He added that a repeat of incidents such as during the fuel protests will not happen and control of critical infrastructure will not be “ceded”. 

He said he is “confident” that the preparations the force has made will ensure that events will go smoothly. 

Kelly, speaking about the threat level, explained how it is not at the highest level but that he believed there would be a major incident during the next six months. 

“Facing into your presidency, of course, there’s going to be policing challenges for us, and not unlike some of the previous EU presidencies.

“It would be highly surprising if there isn’t some really challenging incident for us to deal with during the presidency, and I suppose if I was to categorise where the risk is, I think at the moment we’re sort of on a centre ground. We’re not at critical level, but we’re not at low level, we’re in a sort of a centre ground at the moment.

“We have done substantial preparations for this, all the various eventualities we worked through,” he said. 

Kelly said that planners have worked through various scenarios and threats they believe the State could face.

“There’s a whole range of threats that do face us, and at this stage of the presidency, we don’t know what they’re going to be in the next six months, but we’ve obviously prepared extensively for a whole range of events, particularly around public order, the hybrid threat, and we have the experiences of the fuel blockades,” he said. 

Foreign help

Gardaí will work with foreign forces and the Commissioner said that this is a normal part of similar events across Europe. The Journal has observed multinational police forces on foot patrol at a security conference in Munich, but Kelly said that will not happen here.  

“There will certainly be officers to assist An Garda Síochána from other EU countries, and in fact, there are some here right now.

“These are from very specialist skills that we look for assistance for, but this is nothing unusual members of An Garda Síochána have actually gone to other European countries to assist their colleagues and there is a well established route around this, and it is no secret, for example, we would look for support on counter drone will be one,” he added. 

Kelly said that the public facing “mainstream front line policing” will be undertaken by gardaí.