Six years on: Why Gardaí 'inspected' people's shopping during pandemic

Six years on: Why Gardaí 'inspected' people's shopping during pandemic

It’s an image that feels almost surreal now; a Garda peering into a shopper’s bag on a near-deserted street, both men in face masks, the officer in rubber gloves. But six years ago, at the height of the first Covid-19 lockdown, photographs that appeared to show Gardaí inspecting people’s shopping sparked a national debate about privacy, policing and the limits of state power. In the spring of 2020, as Ireland entered its first lockdown, only ‘es…