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Tom Brady: Gardaí could respond in just three minutes

'Three of those heavily armed units would have responded to the incident in O’Connell Street within three minutes'. Stock picture

Tom Brady Email

June 07 2017 02:30 AM

Police in London have been rightly congratulated for their response time of eight minutes from the first call about the terrorist atrocity there on Saturday night, shooting dead the three attackers and probably saving many lives.

But that speedy reaction has been used to attack the readiness and preparation of the Garda if a similar event took place here. So what would have happened if the terrorists had attacked innocent civilians in central Dublin rather than London?

The atrocity took place at 10.06pm on Saturday. At that time, nine Garda armed support units were on duty in the capital along with a further two armed groups from the Emergency Response Unit. Three of those heavily armed units would have responded to the incident in O'Connell Street within three minutes.

Gardaí have since used GPS to verify the positions of those units at 10.06pm and this exercise confirmed three could have been on the scene in that time. It's only a paper exercise but it does highlight some of the misconceptions that have arisen here on how the Garda could respond to terrorism.

Those misconceptions have all fed into the ongoing controversy surrounding suggestions that security and intelligence should be hived off from the rest of the Garda force and handed over to a separate agency.

Read more - Paul Williams: Gardaí in no way ready to respond adequately to terror attack here

Some of the ill-informed comment may be due simply to ignorance. But there are others working to their own agendas, who are prepared to risk destroying what has proven to be a very successful operation against terrorists from whatever quarter in the past 40 years, to satisfy their own interests.

Supporters of a new agency include a vociferous band, who want the new Garda commissioner to be a civilian, preferably from outside the jurisdiction. At the moment, the main stumbling block to this scenario is that an outsider could not be placed in control of the nation's security and intelligence.

By hiving off that section, the problem is solved and a civilian could take over the running of the rest of the Garda organisation.

It's a dangerous game that is being played and ignores the multitude of successes and the wealth of experience that has been built up by the crime and security branch of the force and its various specialist units.

For 30 years, the Garda stood between us and the threat from what was then internationally recognised as the most dangerous terrorist organisation in the world, the Provisional IRA.

Ironically, while critics here are striving to make it fashionable to set up a separate agency, the rest of Europe is moving in the opposite direction to reduce the number of security and police agencies in an effort to create a one-search platform.

Instead of top of the head ideas, the Government should stick with a formula that works and provides the Garda security and intelligence section and military intelligence as well as counter-terrorism units with more resources to combat the growing threat from jihadis and others.

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