Tuesday 17th November 2009, 5.00pm
Arts Lecture Theatre, New Arts Faculty Building

'From Troubled Ireland to Gangland Ireland: Stretching the Security Blanket'

Seminar by
Dr Vicky Conway, Queens University, Belfast

Vicky Conway studied at University College Cork and the University of Edinburgh before undertaking her PhD at Queen’s University Belfast on Police Accountability in the Republic of Ireland, which paid particular attention to the impact on the Northern Irish Conflict on policing in that jurisdiction. She has held positions at the University of Leeds and the University of Limerick and now lectures in QUB. Her research interests include police accountability, conflicts and policing, and miscarriages of justice. She is currently completing a book on police corruption and accountability in Ireland.


Abstract

The extent to which the Northern Irish Conflict affected policing in the Republic of Ireland has been largely absent from the literature. Without comparing to Northern Ireland, it must be acknowledged that the Irish police, An Garda Síochána were faced with bombs, civilian and police fatalities, riots, armed robberies, prison disturbances and policing the border. The numbers of republicans in the jurisdiction created a substantial workload in trying to limit their activities across the isles. To this end, the Gardaí were assisted by government with draconian legislation that extended police powers in terms of arrest and detention, and enabled the use of non-jury courts, all in the name of the security of the state.



Now, more than ten years after the Good Friday Agreement, these provisions are still in place and, more worryingly, are being stretched to deal with the perceived epidemic of ‘gangland crime’ in Ireland, which reached hysteric levels this year with the death of two ‘innocent’ men in Limerick. This seminar will consider the way in which provisions introduced to deal with terrorism are being stretched to cover gangland crime, now encapsulated by the security discourse. It will argue that serious abuses of human rights are likely to occur, as they did during the Conflict, that safeguards are minimal and that this represents a worrying trend in the normalisation of emergency policing powers.