The Garda operation surrounding yesterday's protests concentrated on negotiating with hauliers and ensuring that avenues for traffic movement were kept open where possible.
Last evening, as the protest was winding down, senior officers admitted the day had gone off much better than hoped. There were no serious confrontations and in almost every instance Garda and protester relations were said to have been amicable.
More than 1,000 gardai were dedicated to duties concerned with the protest. Many other gardai on uniformed duties assisted, particularly at rush hours in urban areas. The Garda operations were conducted on a regional basis, with the six regional assistant commissioners in charge of operations.
In Dublin, where more than 300 officers were dedicated to traffic work, the Garda operation was concentrated in three divisions: the northern division covering the airport and northern section of the M50; the western covering the rest of the M50 and main western and southern arterial routes; and the north central covering Dublin harbour and docks.
The Dublin Metropolitan Region (DMR) Commissioner, Mr Jim McHugh, commended the protesters for co-operating with gardai. For two days prior to the protest the Assistant Commissioner had been involved in planning meetings with superintendents and traffic inspectors from each of the DMR's six divisions.
He also organised a joint operations desk at the command and control centre in DMR headquarters with representatives from the ambulance service, fire service and Dublin Bus.
He said: "The last two days were particularly busy preparing plans in order to meet the needs of the city. Our aim was to ensure the minimum disruption. We are very pleased at the way our operations went.
"We met representatives of the Road Haulage Association and it was a very productive meeting with agreement reached that they would comply with any reasonable requests from the Garda. We manned all the roundabouts on the M50 and had people on all strategic points throughout the city to carry out diversions should they be needed." As it turned out, the only major diversion in the city during the day was at lunchtime when a large number of truckers gathered at the Red Cow intersection on the M50 when the protesters held a press conference.
Mr McHugh said he wished to compliment the protesters on the manner in which they responded to Garda requests during the day. There were no instances of obstruction of emergency services. "There was a lot of negotiation with our people on the ground and that ensured that things worked very well."