GARDA COMMISSIONER DREW Harris has said that, in “hindsight”, the decision to stand down the public order unit on the morning of one day of the Coolock riots was not the right one.

The site of the former Crown Paints Factory in Coolock, Dublin, was subjected to a blockade for more than 100 days after it was earmarked for use to accommodate asylum seekers.

A programme by RTÉ that aired last night looked at the saga and shared never-before-seen footage of the behaviour of protestors, as well as the garda response.

“It was the first time that I’d seen that footage as well,” said Harris.

“So we’d be very anxious to obtain that footage for evidential purposes.”

In the early hours of Monday July 15, the Public Order Unit assisted the owner of the site regain access to the property.

He was accompanied by security and maintenance workers. The Public Order Unit left the scene hours later.

Soon thereafter, tensions escalated at the site and a digger and mattresses were burned.

The public order unit was later redeployed to the site but security staff at the building had been injured during the intervening period.

Some 34 people involved in the public disorder at Coolock have been arrested, and 26 have appeared before the courts.

“The public order unit was on duty. It was stood down at 7am,” said Harris.

“In hindsight, that was not the right decision. We’ve accepted that, and that’s already been covered with the policing authorities.

He added that when gardaí received calls for assistance, that was given. Gardaí, he said, “acted with great professionalism” while trying to calm the situation.

The footage, which Harris described as “revealing”, showed only three gardaí at the site to begin with, but more then joined.

Prosecutions can only take place where there is evidence of a crime – evidence which Harris says is in RTÉ’s footage, which gardaí have not managed to obtain.

‘Lessons to be learned’

Tánaiste Micheál Martin has said that he was “uncomfortable” with what he saw on RTÉ Investigates last night with the State needing to “learn lessons” in relation to the events in Coolock.

“This is a relatively new phenomenon in Ireland in terms of the degree to which people think they can take control of given environments — or indeed the degree to which they think they can take the law in to their own hands,” he said.

Martin wouldn’t be drawn on whether the garda response to the Coolock was inadequate as suggested by some persons in the documentary. However, he admitted that the days of what we consider to be “a traditional garda response” were over.

“I think there are certainly lessons to be learned from it. There was period of time there when the workers in the facility had been ringing (gardaí) consistently. It looked very ominous. It looked very dangerous and threatening.”

He added that lessons could be learned from the “rapid” response to anti-immigration rioting in Belfast recently, “where people were before the courts within days and some jailed within a week I think we could learn lessons from that”.

With reporting by Olivia Kelleher