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THE HOST OF the brunch event at Dublin pub Berlin D2, which has been criticised after scenes emerged of a barman pouring drinks into the mouths of people dancing together bedside the bar, has defended the event.
Social media influencer Jess Brennan today said the footage showing people dancing close together and having alcohol poured into their mouths from a bottle by a member of bar staff had been “a very convenient scapegoat” for the government to distract from its own mistakes.
She posted a statement to her Instagram account, describing the event as a “largely rule-adherent small gathering”, though she acknowledged video footage shared after the event had shown “a very irresponsible move of a member of bar staff before they were reprimanded by management”.
Brennan took issue with the media portrayal of the event and with the person who had shared the short snippet of footage. She said the videos shared online were not representative of the event as a whole and that personal footage as well as CCTV from the venue proves this.
In her statement, which she said should not be quoted in the media without her permission, she also criticised the government over its outrage about this event while it continues to allow “hoards [sic] of people on packed planes flying into the country” and pointed out that many of the recent outbreaks were in meat plants and direct provision centres.
Brennan said Minister Simon Harris, who had criticised the event online, should address those issues if he is going to “tweet about Covid in Ireland and what is truly shameful”.
The influencer said the last few days had been “surreal to say the least” and that she had been subject to “floods of online abuse and personal criticism”.
However she said she had also received a huge amount of support from friends and family and from her followers, of which she has 77,000 on Instagram.
Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn on Sunday described the scenes at the event as “reckless”.
“It simply cannot be tolerated, and behaviour like that around the country puts the work that the majority of people in this country have done, to get us to where we are, at risk. We must adopt a zero-tolerance approach to that from here on,” he said.
“It’s simply not good enough that we’ve had the number of deaths that we’ve had in this country, that we’ve healthcare workers who are absolutely exhausted after all that they’ve gone through in the last six months, that they wake up this morning to look at images like that.
“I really think we need to double down across our society to prevent scenes like that from happening again.”
The Irish Times reports today that owners and staff at the bar would not be prosecuted over the scenes at the event as they broke no laws and were not in breach of public health regulations.
Bar Owner Jay Bourke had handed over CCTV to gardaí, which has been reviewed. Earlier this week Bourke said he was satisfied that the videos shared on social media showed “20 seconds of madness” and that the event was “well controlled” aside from this incident.
“The 20-second clip was taken at ten to four,” Bourke said. “One of my barman jumped on the bar. It looked horrific. It looked like it had gone bananas… the footage doesn’t reflect what went on that day at all.”
He said people had been kept socially distant prior to this and – while young people have to “have fun”, he would ensure “it will never happen again”.
Does this really need to be in the news??
@Gerard Kennedy: well actually yes….apart from being high profile nice years of best memories on my Instagram. It’s my modern day photo album might not have the originals and I’d be very annoyed if I lost my accout. So good to highlight that it’s possible to fall victim to this.
@Tom Ripley: Get a Onedrive account. Backs up all my photos from my phone to the cloud and when I turn on my Desktop it downloads from cloud onto hard drive. Computer then automatically backs my system up onto a separate hard drive. I’ve technically 4 copies of all my photos and I only have to set it up once.
My password used to be password1. I didn’t think it was strong enough so I recently changed it to password2. Maybe I should change it again?
@Mattress Dick: yeah best be safe I suggest you use mine as it’s more secure “P@ssword1”
@Shane Cormican: Password2021 would be more up to date
@Cosmos20202020: Maybe you should update your username to Cosmos21212121 just incase
Does this really need to make the news headlines???
@Gerard Kennedy: Not if you are the hacker. Yes for everybody else.
@Gerard Kennedy: You have read the news and commented twice I guess so
@Gerard Kennedy: there is a possibility someone used ‘coronavirus’ as a password, so yes.
Everyone should have 2FA enabled as a minimum on any website that supports it
Would strongly recommend LastPass or 1password to keep every password strong and unique
Terminology is important. Having your password guessed because it isnt a good password is not “being hacked”. Hacked means someone bypassed the system security and got in anyway. Someone guessing your password means someone just logged in as you, “legitimately”.
@Ronan Fahy: the term hack actually has the definition of ‘gaining unauthorized access to data or a computer’ so hack is the correct.
@NJ: but it is authorised if you enter the correct password.
@Alan McArdle: Access is not authorised because you have a username and password, at best it is confirmed to be the correct login details but there is more to authorisation than just having the correct details to access something. If someone finds a key to my front door they are not authorised to access my house.
don’t want to sound harsh, she’s been amazing,,, but if get ‘hacked’ like this, and then start giving advice about security, then well it’s a little too late.
sidenote – does facebook really care so little about it’s users that someone can’t get an account back when so obviously has been hijacked?
‘Password’ is eight character long, but not safe at all. Many passwords are easy to guess when observing what people post on social media (pets, kids, partners, dob etc), or when a whole platform or service is hacked (many have been in the past, and many will be in the future).
For those who don’t want to spend much money on a password manager, try ‘keypass’. It has a strong password generator.
It is key to have a different password for each service used, so when such service is hacked and credentials posted online, hackers don’t access all your accounts. Also make sure your email account is using a strong password too, and two factor authentication can help (with the hope the platform won’t also use it for marketing purposes).
She’s actually getting on my nerves now at this stage. Yes she has had a bad hand dealt to her and she brought awareness to the cervical smear catastrophe. When she began telling people not to call cancer sufferers fighters and telling them they are so strong I lost all respect for her.
My mam battled ovarian cancer for nearly two years and passed away last June. She was 73 and she FOUGHT it to the last day. She rallied after being told she had weeks to live. We encouraged her to fight not that she needed any encouragement. She had good days and bad days as was expected.
The doctors wanted to put her in palliative care she said no I’m going to fight this. To take away someone’s right and will to fight you may as well put them down.
I was appalled she said this.
have your say