Tánaiste Joan Burton has claimed that water meter protesters are intimidating residents in some estates and using "extremely expensive" phones and videos to film everything.
Ms Burton made the claim as Independent TD Joan Collins alleged "political policing" by gardaí against protesters.
Ms Collins said peaceful protests were being “forcibly broken up by large numbers of gardaí”. She said people had been manhandled and shoved, in some cases in a very aggressive manner and there had been numerous arrests.
In a small estate of 27 houses on Clanbrassil Street, 19 gardaí were brought in. One resident was taken to hospital with an ankle injury and, in Clare Hall, 26 gardaí were involved, taken from stations across Dublin, she said.
She said this raised the question of political policing with gardaí mobilised to break up popular resistance to an unjust tax.
Asked to intervene to defend the rights of protesters, Ms Burton said she had received “a lot of complaints from people who find themselves intimidated by some of the people taking over their estates and actually deciding what their attitude should be in relation to Irish Water”.
She said to Ms Collins: “You should also bear in mind that a lot of people do not like some of the people who’ve arrived in estates to organise a raid and create blockades and they would like those people to leave these estates.”
The Tánaiste said she had seen gardaí in a number of situations “where they have acted with extraordinary patience, firmness and courtesy to people who have been giving them an extremely difficult and hard time.”
She claimed Ms Collins and protesters wanted to close down the existing jobs of water meter installers.
But Ms Collins said there had been an extraordinary spontaneous protest in Crumlin where protesters demonstrated for 15 days and no meters went in. The same happened in Drimnagh but workers got paid whether they put the meters in or not, she said.
The Independent TD called on the Tánaiste to condemn “the tactics of a small number of gardaí who are stepping out of control and creating chaos in the communities”.
Ms Burton said all the protesters she had seen seemed to have “extremely expensive phones, tablets and video camera” and there had been extensive filming of these actions.
She said a core part of the campaign was to video every single second: “There has been the most extensive filming in relation to any of these actions that I have ever seen anywhere. Hollywood would be in the ha’penny place.
But she did not believe “all the extensive filming” could show gardaí behaving improperly.
