Terrorist attacks can happen ‘at any time’ - Garda Commissioner

Garda Commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan has warned that terrorist attacks such as the massacre in Tunisia last month, in which three Irish people died, can happen "anywhere, at any time" .

She told a conference in Dungarvan on Monday that the “new reality” is that anybody can be a victim of such an incident, “any time, any place” and not just in foreign countries.

Speaking to an international audience of policing and security experts at the Global Intelligence Forum in Co Waterford, Ms O'Sullivan said the gardaí, like all police forces, face enormous challenges.

She referred to recent terrorist attacks in Tunisia, France, Kuwait and Denmark, “and I’m not forgetting the attacks happening further east, that we hear about on a daily basis, but sometimes they do not resonate close to home because people think, because it’s happening in a faraway place, it may never happen here.

“But, unfortunately, the new reality for all of us is that, yes, it could. It could happen anywhere, at anytime, and from an Irish perspective, when we hear of victims of a barbaric terrorist attack on a beach in Tunisia with Irish names and addresses in tiny places like Meath and Athlone, and the outpouring of sympathies at the funeral, it just brings it into sharp focus that anybody can be a victim, any time, any place.”

New challenges

Ireland has a history of having to deal with its “indigenous terrorist threat” but must also be aware of new challenges, the commissioner said.

“From our point of view we’re very mindful that while we don’t have any signfiicant intelligence of an attack here in Ireland, nevertheless we remain very, very mindful and have a shared interest with our partners right across the globe in terms of what this means for all of us.”

The Global Intelligence Forum runs until Thursday and is organised every two years by Mercyhurst University in Pennsylvania. Other speakers on Monday included the chairman of Nama Frank Daly, who refused to answer media questions on the ongoing controversy regarding the sale of its Northern Ireland property portfolio.

He told the conference Nama was on course to work its way out of existence ahead of the scheduled wind-up date in 2020, although the property market is still “volatile” and has not settled down.

“Our original target of 2020 is now being advanced and we will probably have most of our work done within another couple of years.”

Challenges still to be faced include the “dearth of new residential development” in Ireland, according to Mr Daly, and the lack of new “grade A” office developments, with few people building because few banks are funding the construction of residential units.

“Last year Nama funded 40 per cent of new housing development in the Greater Dublin area and I don’t think that’s where we should be,” he said. “That’s not an indication of a healthy market that is being funded by the private sector but that’s the reality of where Ireland is at the moment.”