s far passed off virtually without incident:
Queen lays wreath for dead republicans on Ireland visit
Monarch's tour of Dublin takes in Garden of Remembrance as huge security operation surrounds historic trip
Queen lays wreath for dead republicans on Ireland visit | World news | guardian.co.uk
Henry McDonald in Dublin
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 May 2011 17.12 BST
Article history
The Queen has laid a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin to commemorate fallen Irish republicans, during a royal visit to Ireland.
The visit came as Republican dissident attempts to disrupt day one of the historic visit appeared to have been thwarted. Two separate demonstrations against the Queen's presence at the Garden of Remembrance failed to breach Garda lines.
A huge security operation kept up to 200 republican protesters split between locations away from the royal entourage. Apart from a few missiles hurled at the gardaí near the Rotunda maternity hospital in Parnell Square, there was little disorder as the Queen laid a wreath at the memorial.
The radical republican group Eirigi could only muster around 150 demonstrators at the southern end of Parnell Square. At the northern end of the square close to the Garden only 60 protesters turned up to a Republican Sinn Féin (RSF) rally, the party linked to the terror group the Continuity IRA.
Ruarai O'Bradaigh, a former IRA chief of staff and founder of the hardline RSF, denied the turnout was a setback for the dissidents opposed to the Queen's visit.
"Whatever the turnout the problem in Ireland has not gone away, namely the British presence in the north of our country. Resistance to that presence just like the presence of the English Queen will continue," he said.
But most ordinary Dubliners appeared to be either in favour of the royal visit or at least indifferent to the arrival of the first British monarch since 1911.
Watching the the RSF demonstration was Donal Lynch from the North Inner City. Standing outside a branch of Paddy Power's bookmakers on Dorset Street which has been renamed "O'Bama Powers" for the forthcoming US presidential visit, Lynch was unimpressed by the protest. "There were more people at mass in my local church this morning," he said.
"As for them complaining about the €30m (£26m) cost of the visit they are the reason why it' s so high. If it wasn't for their threats to the Queen the cost of her coming would be much lower. Most Dubliners don't mind her being here."
His views were echoed by Co Mayo-born nurse Elaine Peden, who works at Dublin's Mater hospital. "I have no problem with the Queen's visit to Ireland as I worked in the UK myself in nursing for eight years and was very happy to do my training there. I had so much available to me and we had wonderful courses so I can't condemn her for coming here given that I got so much out of the UK."
At the other end of Parnell Square, which had been blocked off to the public, the Eirigi demonstration ended as one the Queen's cavalcade left the gardens without any serious violence.
One of Eirigi's founders and ex-Sinn Féin member Brian Lesson praised the demonstrators as "brilliant" for not allowing the protest to turn violent. A few plastic bottles and sticks were thrown at gardaí on mounted horseback but there was no attempt to break through the security cordon erected around each side of the square.
However, the 150-strong protest was equalled by knots of tourists taking pictures of the security operation in central Dublin along with small groups of the city's drug addicts who normally use the Garden of Remembrance as a "shooting gallery" to inject heroin.
Observing the Eirigi protest was Irish novelist Sean O'Reilly, a native of Derry's Bogside now living in Dublin. He described the relatively peaceful nature of the protest as "the end of something".
O'Reilly added: "I think there is more dissent on the streets than the media are allowing on the airwaves but it is not a great turnout in terms of protest … There is more to be done and said before I can embrace her laying a wreath in the Garden of Remembrance. As for the security operation it's absolutely enormous but I don't know what they are expecting – there appears to be little or no opposition on the streets. Maybe the Garda are just training for Obama really."
The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the huge protective bubble around them have now moved on to Trinity College Dublin, where the royal couple will be shown the ancient Celtic Book of Kells, their last major engagement on the first day of this historic trip to the Irish Republic.
