Two more people arrested at last May's protests during EU accession celebrations were yesterday found guilty of public order offences.
Third-level students Lee Cummins (22), Ashbrooke Terrace, Ranelagh, and Killien Downing (20), Georgian Village, Castleknock, both Dublin, were given the Probation Act after the first admitted the charge and the second paid €500 to the Garda Benevolent Fund.
Dublin District Court heard Cummins, an animation student, was "a major player" in encouraging sit-down protests while Downing, a music student, had slipped between two lines of Garda riot police as he tried to leave the scene of the disturbances. Gardaí, including Assistant Commissioner Al McHugh, told of how the relatively good-humoured protest turned violent as it made its way from O'Connell Street to Navan Road on May 1st last.
Along the way, "scouts" on bicycles were sent ahead to see if it was possible to breach the Garda cordon around the Phoenix Park where EU heads of state had arrived by helicopters for the celebrations in Farmleigh House.
Around 200 gardaí had formed a barrier at the Ashtown roundabout and one protester with a loudhailer told the crowd: "Anyone who wants conflict, move to the front." At that, around 40 people, disguised with ski-masks, gathered "military style" in a box formation and moved towards the Garda line. Rocks, bottles and other missiles were thrown by drunken elements at gardaí as the masked group tried to wedge itself in the Garda line, using flagpoles and sticks to try to get through.
The riot squad, backed up with motorised water cannon, pushed the protesters back towards the city, arresting several people as they did so. Among them was Cummins who, the court heard, repeatedly banged the shields of the riot squad and was "a major player in encouraging others to sit down in the middle of the road".
Downing had already been nearly a mile from the Ashtown roundabout when he was "unfortunate enough to find himself slipping behind the Garda lines", his solicitor, Mr Darragh Robinson, said. Judge Mary Martin said he might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time "but I find it hard to believe".