FFG To Deploy Private Security As Policing Force In City Center After Arnotts Lobbying

Dublin’s new city regeneration authority, Robert Watt, has drafted a tender to employ a private security force to patrol Dublin’s city center in lieu of adequate Garda coverage. This tender and plan has been drafted following consultation with business lobby representatives. There has been no consultation with Dublin City Council, or the local community. 

The move follows a suggestion forwarded by the Arnotts management regarding anti-social behaviour in the city center – the same Arnotts management whose security contractors arrested Yves Sakila earlier this year, resulting in the man’s death. The delegation of public safety to the private sector where adequate training, standards and supervision are sidelined for profit inevitably lead to tragedies such as Sakila's murder.

This move cannot be divorced from the government’s ambition to revitalise Dublin’s city center as a commercial center, embodied in policies such as converting the historic GPO into commercial units. The question must be asked why the government approaches this strategy by sweeping social problems under the rug, without any ambition for preventative policies such as greater housing supports,giving equal labour rights protections to migrant workers and reducing the cost of living. 

The Revolving Door Of State And Corporations, Who Are The Key Players? 

Robert Watt, in his capacity as CEO of the city’s regeneration authority, is servicing a shady business collective called ‘Dublin Town’ which represents the interests of over 2500 businesses in the city center, run by business mogul Richard Guiney. 

Watt is a veteran civil servant well known for his lavish salary and arrogant attitude towards other public sector workers. It is no surprise that he has sidelined Dublin’s elected councillors on the issue. 

Watt himself will head up the interim corporation to bring this venture together. In effect an unelected civil servant is building himself a private policing force in service of cleansing the city center of the visible social services that scare away tourism money from the pockets of the city's bourgeois businesses owners. 

A number of prominent councillors have registered their opposition to the plan, citing civil liberties concerns, while the Social Democrats’ Cian Farrell defended the plan. Farrell is an advisor to the city regeneration authority.

What Are The Broader Trends?

The state has continuously demonstrated stronger shows of force with police operations against protesters over the past year, such as at the fuel protests. 

The city center is awash with homelessness and deprivation, the human debris of a heavily financialized housing market and intergenerational deprivation from state neglect and over-policing . 

Rather than invest in solving these social ills that are at their most visible in the city center unaccountable bodies with no democratic mandate, are investing public money in the scaling up the state's ability to enforce deprivation and make invisible the most marginalised in our society 

Instead of finding a solution the gentrifying regeneration authority seems to be intent to brutishly sweep the failed population under the mat where wealthy tourists won't have to interact with them. 

This move to scale up the state's use of private security on behalf of big businesses will further distance the state's violence from the levers that are supposed to provide some level of accountability. 

This broader wave of government officials making sweeping changes to effect greater violence in and through our society is deeply troubling 

We are seemingly teetering on a situation that years ago would have seemed beyond libertarian parody. 

When the next shoplifter, homeless person or migrant is killed, it will seemingly be no one's fault. Social murder is never prosecuted in our society. If this tender manages to be fulfilled… It is only a matter of time.