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Senior Garda officials believe the first day of checkpoints across the country and the resulting traffic congestion was a “major commotion” that made it clear that people should not travel outside of their home county unless absolutely necessary.
Officials who spoke to The Irish Times did not apologize for long traffic jams in some parts of the country, saying Garda Commissioner Drew Harris had warned very clearly Tuesday that delays were inevitable.
The checkpoints, under Operation Fanacht, began again as of midnight on Tuesday, when the 26 counties of the Republic were moved to Level 3 of the Living with Covid-19 plan in an attempt to stop the worsening of the spread of the virus.
More than 130 static checkpoints erected on highways and other arterial routes yesterday morning across the country were moved to the opposite side of the highway later in the day. It meant motorists delayed in the morning faced the same disruption at night; a strategy that was set to continue for the next three weeks.
Minor roads
Thousands of other mobile checkpoints were also being erected on more secondary roads across the country. Garda sources said that motorists who plan to avoid main routes in an attempt not to be delayed by Operation Fanacht checkpoints “will be very disappointed.”
While it has emerged that the government was considering a gradual penalty system for minor breaches of the Covid-19 restrictions, gardaí said that was not an issue for them at this time.
They said that because the advice to people not to leave their home county was set out in statutory instruments, it was, in fact, written into law. And so the Gardaí had the right to detain people and question them about their movements, although no sanctions arose for those who ignored that measure.
No compliance function
Harris has already said that while Gardaí did not have any law enforcement roles at the checkpoints, they were being deployed to “educate” drivers on the need not to leave their home county during Level 3 for at least minus the next three weeks.
And the officers at Garda headquarters who run Operation Fanacht believe that the presence of gardaí on the roads in a constant high-visibility operation, combined with long traffic delays on the roads, would be enough to prevent most of the people leave their home county unless essential.
Traffic updates issued by AA Roadwatch from early yesterday reported a queue of vehicles of up to 8 km on the N7 heading west from J2 Kingswood to J5 Athgoe, where a checkpoint was located.
Other locations where traffic lines were described as “very slow” or “very heavy” included the M11-M50 near Bray, Co Wicklow, heading west on the M4 between J5 Leixlip and J6 Celbridge, as well as J15 Kiltiernan heading south on the M50 to the Bray-Fassaroe area on the M11, among others.
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