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US citizens in Ireland should be “vigilant” while out and about in capital Dublin, according to the country’s embassy.
The July 25 warning came after an American tourist was left fighting for his life after being attacked by a gang of teenagers close to O’Connell Street, Europe’s widest thoroughfare, and next door to one of Ireland’s main police stations.
The brutal beating of 57-year-old Stephen Termini, which was captured on CCTV, came in the wake of a June street assault that hospitalised Oleksandr Hrekov, a visiting Ukrainian actor.
In 2019, 1.7 million Americans visited Ireland, a country where tens of millions of US citizens claim ancestry. The US is Ireland’s biggest source of foreign investment – with Meta, Twitter and Amazon all among the companies which have their European or regional headquarters in Dublin – and is also Ireland’s number one trade partner.
Now the embassy in Dublin has advised Americans to “keep a low profile” and “exercise good personal security practices” while in Dublin. People were further cautioned to limit phone scrolling and earphone use while seeing the sights.
O’Connell Street and nearby avenues are the location of some of Dublin’s main attractions, such as the General Post Office, the launch site for the 1916 rebellion that paved the way for independence from Britain six years later.
But complaints about drug-dealing, muggings, homelessness and a lack of police presence in the city have soared. Opposition politicians have accused the government of ignoring the issue and focusing instead on pushing through a vaguely-worded draft “hate speech” law that would allow police to seize computers and smartphones and prosecute owners who refuse to divulge passwords.
Leo Varadkar, who heads Ireland’s three-party governing coalition, conceded on July 25 that police recruitment targets would be “very hard to meet.”
Taoiseach (prime minister) Varadkar’s warning came after Justice Minister Helen McEntee said people could not expect “to be safe all the time” in Dublin.
