Ireland will ban “intimidating” protesters from wearing balaclavas after clashes with police at anti-immigration demonstrations.
The government has received legal advice that a ban on face-coverings is possible when there is clear intent to intimidate or to prevent police identifying someone committing a crime.
“The minister intends to introduce a ban on wearing masks at protests in circumstances where the wearing of a mask is intended to intimidate,” a spokesman for Helen McEntee, the Justice Minister, told the Irish Independent.
Balaclavas are particularly menacing in Ireland because of their use by paramilitary groups during the Troubles. Drew Harris, the Garda commissioner, recently said wearing them had “potentially sinister overtures in Ireland” in an internal note.
The new legislation will allow face coverings to be worn for medical reasons or if it is cold in a country, which like the UK, has recently seen far-Right marches and anti-migrant riots.
British police were given the power to arrest masked protesters earlier this year before the riots that erupted after three children were killed at a summer camp in Southport.
People in the UK found guilty of wearing a mask with the intention to intimidate face a £1,000 or a month in prison
Protests across Ireland
In November last year, businesses were looted and trams torched in Dublin city centre after children were attacked outside a city centre creche.
Last month, balaclava-wearing protesters threw projectiles at Irish police at the proposed site of an asylum facility in Coolock in Dublin. That came after masked protestors, in June, gathered outside Taoiseach Simon Harris’s family home to protest against his government’s immigration policies. Mr Harris has refused to move to move to an official state residence, where he could be better protected, citing concerns about uprooting his family.
Irish far-Right groups travelled to Belfast in Northern Ireland before riots broke out there on Saturday. Some of those travelling to the rally outside Belfast City Hall, which was organised online, were part of the “Coolock Says No” protest. Four people were arrested and three police officers injured in the clashes at the rally held after the Southport stabbings.