A spokesman for Extinction Rebellion Ireland, a Doctor Ciarán O’Carroll, is quoted in this morning’s Irish Times as saying that they “have no choice” but to throttle traffic in the city-centre at the start of the only four-day bank-holiday in the year.
“We have tried marching, and lobbying, and signing petitions,” the doctor tells the Times. “Nothing has brought about the change that is needed. And no damage that we incur can compare to the criminal inaction of the Irish Government in the face of climate and ecological breakdown.”
It’s a funny thing that, what with this being the only choice left to them, and they having worn themselves out marching, and lobbying, and signing petitions, that so very few people have heard of Doctor O’Carroll and Extinction Rebellion Ireland before. It’s odd also that the Irish Times did not put this question to Doctor O’Carroll – if Extinction Rebellion Ireland have been doing all this marching, lobbying and petition, why is the only hearing of it now? Have they not heard of Twitter? Or even, God help us, the ‘gram?
As a scientist, your faithful correspondent has to admit that it's entirely possible that all this has been going without my noticing it. I struggle to keep up with pop culture - until very recently I thought Drake was a gentleman duck, for instance.
So, in the interest of giving Extinction Rebellion Ireland a fair shake, I looked them up in Google Trends. In Ireland over the past ninety days, Extinction Rebellion Ireland have been of more interest than "hemorrhoid ointment", but not as much interest as "soda bread recipe." Here's the chart:
But the politics of all this are for another day. Right now the city has to deal with the fact that an enormous public nuisance is going to be caused in the city centre this afternoon and the city has a duty to protect its citizens from that enormous public nuisance. Extinction Rebellion Ireland’s right to protest does not override every citizen’s right to travel across the city as she wishes.
What, then, is to be done? Slooshing the protesters off the bridge with water cannon is the first and obvious solution. A joyous idea, and one sure to be popular with the people slowly roasting in their cars, but unfortunately not practical.
Just as a tackler in rugby has a duty of care to the player he tackles in the air landing safely on the ground, so the moral water cannon operator has a duty of care to those whom he scrubs from the pavement. The protest will centre on O’Connell Bridge, and it’s impossible to guarantee against one of these wretches going into the Liffey and drowning for the cause. This would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed, and so we must think of Plan B.
Plan B is to simply arrest the bums and cart them off to the barracks. Unfortunately, the contemporaneous situation in London, where protestors are also vigilantly acting the bollocks, suggests that being arrested is exactly what the protestors want. Therefore, the city should use the water cannon and let Extinction Rebellion Ireland chance Anna Livia’s cold embrace before playing into their hands.
Happily, there is Plan C – or B+, if you’re feeling witty.
Plan B+ is to arrest the protestors as before, but rather than cart them off to the Bridewell or Pearse Street cop shop, they are simply taken to the Papal Cross in the Phoenix Park and released into the wild, to gambol with the deer or make their way back into the city as they please.
The Phoenix Park, as readers may be aware, is not small. No buses run by the Papal Cross and there is no way out except on foot. Those Extinction Rebellion Ireland members who wish to return to the fray are, of course, entirely free to do so, but if they do it, they will have to do it on foot. An hour’s forced march back to the bridge may take some of the pep from their step and make them wonder if there really isn’t one more petition that they could sign that could yet win the day.
And when the rebels get to O’Connell Bridge, if it is the case that the protest is still going on, it’s simple enough to scoop them all up as before and spin them out again. Of course, each trip goes a little further than before. A Phoenix Park veteran can be dropped off to that green area in Cappagh Road, in Finglas, near the National Orthopaedic Hospital. After Cappagh, you get a spin out to Mulhuddart, say. And so on, and on, and on.
We could even have some sport on it, with Paddy Power making book on any activist being able to make it back to Dublin from west of the Shannon before midnight. Or Boyle's - we're neither snobs nor monopolists, you know.
It has long been the case that Dublin’s citizens are expected to put up with having their lives and business interrupted at the whim of any jackass with a bee in his bonnet. Maybe it’s time the city stopped being played for a chump for once, and gave those people who look for trouble exactly what it is they seek.