Watchdog questions new garda powers to issue house party fines

The Irish Civil Liberties Council (ICCL) has expressed concern about the introduction of new powers of the garda to impose fines on organizers and attendees of house parties.

Yesterday, it was announced that specific fines of up to € 500 will be introduced for people who violate the general guidelines of Covid-19.

As part of a series of gradual fines agreed by the government, people who host house parties could be fined 1,000 euros for the first offense, 1,500 euros for the second and 2,500 euros for the third offense.

Speaking in Newstalk This morning, the executive director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Liam Herrick, said that the new laws were “a mistake”.

He said: “What we’ve had so far is a community policing system based on prosecution as a last resort.

“Since April, we have had more than 20 different regulations under the health law.

“Some of them had penal provisions, which means that the guards not only interact with people and tell them what to do, but they have the power to prosecute people if they resist, are really defiant and refuse to comply.

That general approach has really focused on the idea that this is a public health crisis, not a criminal phenomenon.

“We must be careful not to involve guards in people’s private lives and not to jeopardize the long-term relationship between the community and the police.

Herrick said that the fine system introduced in the UK, to which the Irish system will be similar, had been “a complete failure”.

Herrick also questioned how the laws would be applied in practice.

He said: “Is there any reference [in the proposal] to penalize people who organize parties at home, but there is already a penalty of up to 2,500 euros for organizing an event that violates public health regulations, as things stand.

If we go into criminalizing people’s behavior around so-called house parties, we still face some of the same constitutional and other problems that we’ve had until now.

“An unworkable law can cause harm,” he added.

Given that, under the new measures, gardaí can impose fines on people who they believe were planning to attend a house party, Herrick questioned how “a reasonable threshold of suspicion” could realistically be applied in that situation.

He said: “The Garda Sergeants and Inspectors Association expressed concern last night about this, how does a guard suspect that someone is on their way to a party at a house?

“Is the young person with a six-pack of beers more likely to be under ‘reasonable suspicion’ than the middle-aged, middle-class person with a bag full of wine bottles?

“These are the kind of practical surveillance problems that we have really done everything we can to avoid so far, which I think we are opening ourselves up to unnecessarily.”