Gardai Appear to be Taking Sides in Water Meter Dispute

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There were 6 Gardai today in Edenmore, Coolock assisting Irish Water workers install water meters. They prevented local residents making their protest.

Now Gardai have three main roles. One is to keep the peace, two is to uphold the constitution, and three is to apply law equally. The video of this incident shows the Gardai refusing to interact with the residents’ complaints or tell them who would speak to them. Basically the Gardai were to all intents and purposes acting as a private security firm for the Irish Water Company and this is not a good development.

The Gardai will already be well aware that Tony Rochford has secured an injunction against Irish Water until the 23rd June to stop them installing dangerous and substandard meter housing boxes and hence this is reason enough to suspend this work elsewhere.

They are also be aware that people are challenging this on a contract basis and have sent legal notices which must be satisfactorily responded to by the company before any work can go ahead. As a contract dispute it is a civil matter which is outside of the jurisdiction of the Gardai. It only becomes their jurisdiction when someone breaches the peace, then it becomes criminal. However that only applies on a person by person basis and they must be arrested. Breach of the peace works both ways and must be applied equally, and peacefully preventing the disputed work going ahead is not a breach of the peace.

Gardai seem to be placing the people’s rights below those of a private company. If Irish Water want to resolve the civil dispute they must bring the dispute to a court and explain their position to get a court order, if they can. They have not done so to date and did not attend at Tony Rochford’s hearing either. This is called due process of law and the Gardai should only act if such an order is obtained and breached. Otherwise they are not carrying out the three main functions above, and the Gardai are simply being used as corporate muscle.

The impression this is giving the general public here is that the Gardai are “for hire” to corporations. We would like to know who instructed them to do this as we were reminded this week by a government minister that government has no power to instruct Gardai (regarding the Tuam home). We urge them to roll back now and allow due process rather than strong arming one side for the benefit of the other. We want our Gardai out there stopping crimes and we are sure that is where they would much rather be. A Garda is employed under a strict code of conduct and “just following orders” that breach that is not good enough.

DDI is a great supporter of the Gardai and the job they do. We needs Gardai, and we don’t want their good reputation diminished by dubious orders from above.

The tragic irony of this is that Irish Water’s metering installation company is here to facilitate the taxing of people for water while it’s owner Denis O’Brien, who is being paid by the tax payer, is himself a tax exile.

Just to put the water charging scenario in context, don’t believe for a minute that this was something foisted upon us because of the bailout. It was planned long before that. It was planned long before the crash in 2008  in fact. New housing developments built many years prior to 2008 already had meter housing boxes that conformed to the new requirements to house a water meter.

This is just one more part of a larger long term plan that keeps on moving forward regardless of whether we have FG/Lab or FF/Green/PD. So long as we continue to elect people from the established political class this will continue. They are all fingers on the same glove. This will only stop when DDI is elected.