The big issue facing Enda Kenny over the garda strike will be at the point at which he picks up the phone to tell the chief-of-staff of the Defence Forces to deploy soldiers.
It may never happen but the need could arise, and quickly. Empty garda stations could come under attack in areas where there are sufficient numbers of disaffected young people.
In an escalating situation, demonstrations infiltrated by republican or other subversive elements could coincide with the absence of gardai seeking better pay. Either the State chequebook or the Army will need to be brought out.
Calling out the Army is not a decision easily made by any civil administration. Mr Kenny's predecessor, Garret FitzGerald, agonised and dithered over the decision in July 1981 when the State faced a frontal assault by the IRA horde trying to sack the British embassy in Ballsbridge. FitzGerald was finally on the point of picking up the phone to the Army when the decision was taken from him by the gardai, who had suffered more than 100 casualties from heavy and sustained stoning on Merrion Road.
On that afternoon, gardai drew batons and chased and beat the rioters back into Dublin city centre in a fashion none of the northern Provos had ever encountered on the streets of Belfast or Derry.
Those were tough times, and tough action was taken. But the guards did their duty and prevented the intervention of soldiers, whose only means to stop violent demonstrators is to shoot them dead.
It's the image of soldiers on the streets that must exercise the minds of politicians. Only those who seek to damage the State can welcome this situation - and there are quite a few of those people around.
If the dispute becomes prolonged and worsens, army units might have to be deployed and build billets in garda stations.
Weapons seized by gardai in the past year have included modern military rifles, exactly the same type the Army normally encounters only on its dangerous UN missions in the Middle East.
It will be a very difficult issue for government PR gurus to spin and could have a huge downside as, if someone starts shooting, someone else nearby will inevitably capture it on a camera phone and the Irish meltdown might go viral.
But any potential Mad Max types should bear in mind what happened the last time the gardai went on the blue flu strike in May 1998. An IRA gang decided to use the opportunity to carry off a container lorry heist on the N11 near Ashford, Co Wicklow.
Unfortunately for the gang, there were some gardai not on strike that day. Armed plain-clothes detectives, mainly Special Branch, were on duty supported by the Army Ranger Wing. One of the gang, Ronan MacLochlainn, from Ballymun, north Dublin, was shot dead and three others were arrested, charged, tried and jailed.
Fortunately for the Government, the vast majority of Irish people are law-abiding.
There could be trouble in working-class areas of Dublin but the Hutch gang on the north side of the Liffey has been beaten into near submission, and members of the Kinahan gang on the south side are hanging their heads in shame since they murdered innocent council worker Trevor O'Neill in front of his family in Mallorca in August.
Aside from the nightmare scenarios, there are other extremely urgent issues in the force that the Government needs to actually address.
Members of the GRA and AGSI admit that while the single main issue is pay, there are far deeper problems in the force that desperately need to be looked at and fixed.
GRA sources speak of an overarching dysfunctional and nepotistic management; "numpty desk jockeys"; police work being made impossible by rigorous and wasteful adherence to nonsensical human resource and roster systems; and outdated technology.
Most young people join An Garda Siochana with the intention, not only of safe employment, but of helping citizens in times of need.
They very often find they are unable to do so because of strictures, mismanagement, a lack of resources and a fear of being hauled up before the Garda Ombudsman or of facing an often brutal internal disciplinary regime.
Most frontline gardai are now under some form of investigation or other.
The stance taken by many is to simply back off and not try to do their duty. Hence, the attraction of the "desk-jockey" roles, with possibly one-quarter of the force now tied to clerical work or to the motor revenue collecting work that is carried out by local government officials in the UK but is allocated to gardai in this State.
This is the fault of poor garda management and also the fault of successive governments' indifference to and ignorance of how they should be providing proper policing.
This is a historic occasion, the first time an illegal strike has been called by gardai, and that in itself should already have been enough to focus governmental minds.
Any pay increase to offset a strike, but which is not predicated on fixing what's wrong in An Garda Siochana, is just not a solution.
Sunday Independent
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