Belfast goose and Dublin gander

A long time ago in the same galaxy as this one, we wrote a post entitled "Ah sure why we would need that here." This was with reference to skill of politicians and pundits in the Irish Republic to be sweepingly judgmental about the flaws of other countries accompanied by massive blind spots regarding the same flaws back home. In the last fortnight we got two more examples. On the buffoonish side there was minister Conor Lenihan's kebabs fiasco. Given the willingness of Bertie Ahern to gloss this one over, like so many others, Fintan O'Toole was correct in saying that "higher standards apply to the members of Peterborough council than to ministers in our sovereign government."

On the more serious side we have Thursday's abortive post office raid in north county Dublin in which two of the robbers were shot dead by police. It's fairly clear from the accounts that the robbers never fired a shot and may not even have raised their weapons.* Attitudes in the Republic will range from those of Justice Minister McDowell, who doubtless wanted to be there himself in the post office with the police, to those who will feel at least some mixture of sympathy for the two deceased and their families. The incident will certainly highlight the huge gulf between the state of police oversight in the Republic and that which is advocated by our government for the police in Northern Ireland. The Dublin shootings will be investigated by er... another policeman and ultimately the only power of punishment resides in the aforementioned Minister for Justice. Compare that to Belfast's police ombudsman Nuala O'Loan and her independent investigative authority.

The parallel with Northern Ireland should be pursued further. The Garda clearly had a tip-off about the Dublin robbery, and they heavily outmanned and outgunned the robbers once they showed up. So why wasn't it possible to intercept them before the shooting started? It's difficult not to think of the apparent shoot-to-kill policy of the security forces in Northern Ireland; here's a fairly complete list of the victims, and note that if you think it's a good idea for the police to go in all guns blazing when they have a tip, consider the fate of Anthony Hughes, who simply got caught in the crossfire. Indeed, consider the role of the SAS shoot-to-kill operation in Gibraltar, which triggered one of the ugliest few months in Northern Irish history. It seems that one thing Bertie Ahern and Dubya share is a belief that only bad people do bad stuff.

*UPDATE 27 MAY: Several sources indicate that the robbers did raise their weapons. Also, some civilians in the shop/post office at the time of the shooting are unhappy with the Garda procedures. And only one gun has been recovered. One of the dead was unarmed.