significant number of protesters who effectively shouted him down.<\/a><\/p>\nGarda Commissioner Justin Kelly and Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan both addressed the annual conference of the Garda Representitive Association in Westport, Mayo yesterday and delivered the same core message – threats, abuse and harrassment of members of the force will not be tolerated.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Kelly said: \u201cWe have set up an incident room, one in every region. So we have four incident rooms. These are being led by a senior investigating officer, an experienced officer.<\/p>\n
“We are certainly looking to see if there are any any criminal offences that have been committed, particularly during the period of the fuel blockades.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there are any criminal offences disclosed, we will certainly be prosecuting them as far as we possibly can.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have asked members of An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na who have worked during the fuel blockades, if any of them have been subject either during that period or actually afterwards to abuse, threats, intimidation online or in person, to contact these incident rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he also said he was in contact with officials from the Department of Justice to see if new laws were required to prevent a repetition of the blockade of the Whitegate oil refinery in east Cork and other vital state infrastructure.<\/p>\n
![\"Handout](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0_01KNYFQQZ4VPQJNXBKFSVQVSJ9.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
(Image: An Garda Siochana\/PA Wire )<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThere is a couple of things around the blockade.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne is around the area of critical infrastructure. We certainly want to, from our point of view in An Garda Siochana, look at potential offences around the blockade of critical infrastructure: Look what we have, see is it adequate, see are there recommendations that we can make.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to be clear about this, this is a matter for the legislators, but we make recommendations and how we do that is the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that’s one aspect we’re looking at around that blockade of critical infrastructure around potential offences.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to look at the whole gamut of how that behaviour affects members of An Garda Siochana and if there are potential offences there or additional offences.<\/p>\n
There are some offences at the moment, particularly under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, we’re trying to see are there any additional ones that can help us for some of these particularly odious cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a really, really serious matter for me. I watched some of the footage online -absolutely appalling behaviour. And in fact, it wasn’t just members of Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na. It was also drivers of fuel trucks, even drivers of transport vehicles who were transporting members of An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na around the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if any of that behaviour has crossed the criminal threshold, we will certainly be looking to prosecute those individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Justice Minister Jim O\u2019Callaghan, who also attended the conference, also slammed people who harassed gardai<\/a> during the protests.<\/p>\nHe said: \u201cIt is totally unacceptable for online anonymous cowards to seek to intimidate members of An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na who are representing the public and defending the public from criminal activity.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he said he was hopeful there would be prosecutions and convictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly has told his rank and file officers that he takes threats and abuse against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7782,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-411793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-gardai","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}