Updated at 8.37pm
VIDEO FOOTAGE HAS emerged showing the moment Tánaiste Joan Burton was hit with a water balloon thrown by a protester in Jobstown yesterday.
The Tánaiste was protected by gardaí, supporters, and staff from the Cósan college, where she was attending a graduation ceremony.
But the group was hemmed-in to a wall by an angry group of protesters, who chanted “we won’t pay”.
At one point, a man calls the Labour leader a “c***” who “sold the country out to Germany”.
Burton was hit by a water balloon in the course of the protest — the footage shows it striking her on the right-side of her head.
She regains her composure almost instantly, but later in the footage looks visibly shaken by the encounter.
This was before the hours-long action that saw the Tánaiste trapped in her car by the protest group.
She eventually left the scene in a Garda car after a tense stand-off with demonstrators, who banged on her vehicle chanting various slogans, including “peaceful protest”.
Speaking earlier, Burton said the protest had taken away from graduating students’ experience.
She also condemned Anti Austerity Alliance TD Paul Murphy, who took part in the later protest.
Murphy has repeatedly insisted that what happened yesterday was peaceful.
“If that’s his idea of a peaceful protest I would not like to see that norm being set for Ireland,” Burton said.
Independent senator Katherine Zappone (below) — who is one of the founders of the Cósan centre — said the experience was “intimidating”.
However, she said the protesters’ behaviour in the later action was even worse.
“Afterwards, when she had given the address and came out later and gets into the car. That is when I think even more intimidation and I think really very menacing behaviour erupted,” the Senator told Newstalk.
All screengrabs: 1972marathon/Youtube
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say