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GARDA COMMISSIONER DREW Harris has said that gardaí are seeing an “awful lot of compliance” with Covid-19 restrictions, but also witnessing “irresponsible behaviour which is risking lives in the end”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s The Late Late Show, Harris also said that An Garda Síochána does not “regard a dentist’s appointment in Tenerife as being a reasonable excuse to travel”.
He said he hopes that greater penalties will “send a message” in terms of non-essential international travel.
Harris made the remarks following reports yesterday that Irish people were booking appointments at a dental clinic on the Spanish island so they can go on holiday.
He said: “Medical intervention, medical treatment is allowed for in the regulations but that is against the clause about how reasonable it is. I would suggest that travelling to Tenerife, thousands of kilometres, whenever there are perfectly good dentists here in Ireland is not reasonable. From this morning we have changed our approach, we warned people that they may be prosecuted if they carry on on their journey.
We have found that the €500 fine is perhaps not the deterrent we thought it might be, but we found out today that people have turned back rather than be prosecuted and have a criminal record and risk actually imprisonment or a suspended sentence which is far greater penalty than a €500 fixed penalty notice. There is travel for medical purposes which obviously is essential, people travelling for critical treatment.
The Garda Commissioner said that the organisation has “strong operational capability” at present and that they adopted an enforcement approach to situations like shebeens and some travel restrictions in recent times.
When questioned on the potential infringement on civil liberties, Harris said that the gardaí had been given “extraordinary powers” which are “almost beyond imagine 18 months ago”.
He said: “They make me nervous in so much as we must have some set clauses and cut off points and that’s what’s built into our legislation in any case. There’s a huge amount of checks and balances in our system.”
Harris also discussed his experience of having Covid-19 over Christmas.
He described it as “mild but unpleasant” and that he counted himself fortunate.
Father’s death
Harris also told Ryan Tubridy that he has worked hard not to be bitter after his father was killed by the IRA.
The senior officer’s father Alwyn, a Superintendent in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), died in a car bomb attack in 1989.
Harris had also been an officer in the RUC at the time.
He remained in the force when it became the Police Service of Northern Ireland and rose to the rank of Deputy Chief Constable before taking on the top job at the Garda in 2018.
“It takes a long time to come to terms with something as difficult, as traumatic and as awful in your life, and you carry it with you every day,” he told The Late Late Show.
“Every day I would think about my father, but in terms of me as a police officer and now the Garda Commissioner, what it means to me is I think I have an empathy for those who have been the victim of serious crime.
“In lots of ways it has had a profound effect on my outlook at to what policing should be … and what we should do for those who are without a voice or might be marginalised in society.”
He said he has worked hard at not being bitter.
“In these things you have perhaps a choice, I was married to Jane, we had our first son and then we had another three children after that, and you have a choice in terms of the household your children are going to grow up into, and so I worked hard at not being bitter,” he said.
“I don’t mean to be smart or clever, or shine a halo when I say that, because it was very difficult and it took a long time to get to that point, but at the same time you have your own life to live and nobody would be more upset than my father if he though I was just living an embittered life.”
Asked if he felt the need to forgive the killers, Harris said he was neutral on that.
“They have never sought atonement, and forgiveness is a two-way street,” he said.
With reporting from the Press Association
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Chemical castration and then a tattoo across their foreheads.
Let them wake up in fear every day for the rest of their pathetic lives. Maybe then they will understand what they are doing to these children who will be unable to trust anyone for the rest of their lives.
Why chemical actual with axe would be better.
This is kind of shite I was referring to
Absolute Sc*m
Chop off their penises.
And ram it up their jacks..
What is it with commentators on this site? You’re all obsessed with cutting off/mutilating male genatalia. Go back to the dark ages
So sorry to bring this up but the current plural of penis is penii. I know we use the other one but penii is a la mode at the mo. So sorry to have raised that, i’ll be headin back to the pole now. Santa
I don’t know who is worse, the pedophiles or the parents pimping out their children. And I don’t give a damn about how poor they are, there is no excuse in the world that could possibly justify that. Pimp themselves out if that’s the case…
Dont mean to defend but playing devils advocate here. Must be really difficult to see your kids starve too. In parts of this world people have to make very tough choices to survive daily. Its the, relativly, rich western paedos that are to blame. No market no internet abuse.
I’d prostitute myself before I’d prostitute my kids. Or indeed, any kids
You would have to be concerned about the red thumbs down people here???
I feel physically sickened by this article.
Vile people.
Great Job Cops
These people should be jailed for 20+ years and only let out after getting a tattoo on their forehead. They have forfitted their right to a normal existance.
public hanging, bury them, dig them up and hang them again
Ah, slight flaw in your plan there. Won’t the neck have decomposed underground to a point where the head is likely to come off on the second suspension?
Puts against wall and riddles with bullets… lowest sc*m of all
I am free to execute ALL paedophiles for free.
The paedo’s are bad enough but to say parents are pimping out their own kids! What kinda sick fu#ks are they? Parents should be jailed for life with it made well known in the prision what their in for as for the paedo’s chop off their hands, castrate them, tattoo it on their foreheads and backs what they are and tag them til the day they die
I fail to understand why chemical castration should’nt be applied as a means of control for people who obvously are mentally unstable and dangerous, or are the human rights brigade not interested in
Chem/cas will not stop abuse….withdrawing their oxygen supply will.
Because if they can’t use their penii they will use any foreign object at hand. Child sexual abuse is more about the power and the infliction of pain than sexual pleasure for the perpetrator. Lock them up and make them live in conditions where they wish for death the remaining days of their lives. Death is too much a reward for them.
Read this folks. Directly from Australian outback
Truly chilling stuff
http://www.reddit.com/r/LetsNotMeet/comments/1t2uwq/the_office_in_the_middle_of_nowhere/
Reads like poorly written fiction.
Live video stream of them being castrated.
Where are the nsa and government.
They have all the information and surely have the ability to shut these down.
Why the will isn’t there is questionable. Spend the extra resources required
Animals that do these things should face the death penalty,there’s no other sentence that could possibly fit this crime!
What’s the point in putting animals to death? What have they done?
Save the foxes first
Child sexual exploitation and trafficking is a very common practice all across the Far East and completely acceptable by the locals and the West can do jack to stop it.
Child sexual exploitation is common in many of the poorer eastern countries, but to say that it’s completely acceptable by the locals is not true, the majority of people in these countries detest pedophilia and they see what’s going on as a total abuse of their poverty. Also, to say that the rest of the world can do jack to stop it is bullshit and the above story proves that, if we had our priorities right we could make a real difference.
Bring back hanging……
Cut off their eyelids and sprinkle salt on their eyeballs; then have a cat lick the salt off……a cat that has rabies. Then squirt lighter fluid on their knackers and set up a mini-barbeque over it where strips of their flesh are cooked and their family members are forced to eat while they watch. Oh, and give them a chinese burn while all this is happening.
Death penalty wouldnt solve anything. America has proven that. Very easy to go for knee jerk reaction. I would be all for really long jail terms plus tatooing. Death penalty just doesnt work as deterrant
Well it will deter the same person from doing it again. As for others, of course not but the DP is about revenge as are most of the posts above.
@Stephen: Show me one executed person that has reoffended…
Tie them to posts pour petrol around there feet and we can all through matches at them.Putting these disgusting evil people in prison for a couple of years with a slap on the hand doesn’t reform them it just makes them more careful not to be caught next time.Its time to dispose of all these pedophiles .
have your say