Following the arrest of Anti-Austerity TD Paul Murphy in Dublin, Joe Horgan examines whether Ireland is guilty of political policing.
Murphy, a Socialist Party politician who was one of four people arrested last week, was questioned over a water charges protest last November which left Tánaiste Joan Burton trapped in her car for over two hours.
A small protest also took place at the London Embassy last week where supporters of the anti-water charges movement handed in a letter to voice their support for the right to protest in Ireland.
I’m not really aware, thankfully, as to how Ireland’s gardaí go about their business. I don’t know on what basis they make decisions about how to do something. So whilst they have assured us — just as their friendly journalists and Government TDs have done — that last week’s arrest of TD Paul Murphy of the Socialist Party was along normal operational lines, it still looks odd.
It still looks mighty strange and heavy-handed that before seven o’clock in the morning six gardaí should knock on the TD’s family home and insist on taking him to a police station, giving him just time to put some clothes on. Six policemen at the door of someone’s house? Is Paul Murphy dangerous? Is he at risk of fleeing the country? Is he likely to turn violent? Is this well-known left wing figure likely to resist the gardaí?
After all, and the contrast is both startling and obvious, the banker Sean Fitzpatrick, who was involved in activities that led Ireland to economic collapse, was arrested by gardaí by arrangement at Dublin Airport on his return from holiday. Was Sean Fitzpatrick’s palatial gated home thought of as sacred territory but Paul Murphy’s ordinary flat not? A morning raid on a suspect’s house — is that really necessary in this instance?
And what exactly was Murphy being taken away by the police for? Well, he was being questioned over the false imprisonment of Joan Burton at a public protest in November last year. She was left sitting in her car for almost three hours as protesters refused to leave and banged on the vehicle. Taoiseach Enda Kenny described it at the time as a ‘kidnapping’.
Presumably there is a right to protest and that is not a criminal offence. And presumably the expenditure of police resources on this case is going to be proved to be worthwhile. So we will have to wait and see what Paul Murphy TD is charged with.
And we will have to assume that the closeness of this arrest to water charge deadlines, a campaign Murphy is closely involved in, is merely coincidence. But whatever we assume it has to be said that the arrest of an elected representative in that way over such a minor matter looks extremely heavy-handed.
Though not if we were to listen to the media or a raft of Murphy’s fellow TDs. RTÉ’s chief crime correspondent was quick to assure us all that normal procedure had been followed in that way he has of sounding less like a journalist and more like a garda PR man. Labour showed just why they continue to be the mainly meaningless party they have always been but Fine Gael outdid themselves.
Now for the majority of the time I have been living in Ireland, Fianna Fáil have been in power. The nudge-nudge way they did business was eye-opening. Fine Gael are a different breed all together. Where Fianna Fáil are shifty and untrustworthy Fine Gael are gentlemen — gentlemen farmers and gentlemen executives. Fine Gael are so full of their own propriety and the contrast they offer to Fianna Fáil with their sense of grandeur is hard to watch.
I’ve never quite understood the term ‘west-Brit’, never understood what that was really trying to imply but after watching Fine Gael I think I know. If ever there were a party that seems to want to model itself on the idea of a British public schoolboy it is Fine Gael.
Leo Varadkar, Simon Coveney and Simon Harris are so unctuously superior that David Cameron might feel abashed in their company. Indeed, watching Paul Murphy after his release being confronted by Simon Harris on RTÉ was to watch Fine Gael’s youngest TD barely able to hide his glee at Murphy having spent the day in police custody.
I’m not sure that Murphy is right when he calls what happened to him political policing, but along with the arrest a few years back of another left-wing TD on drink driving charges that went nowhere, there does seem to be something amiss.
I can think in the 16 years I have been in Ireland of many TDs and leading business men who by right should have been answering an early morning knock on the door that never came. The fact that another TD from a certain political background is doing so raises some very interesting questions for Ireland.
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