Presenter Andrea Gilligan has said shopkeepers in Dublin face “intimidation” on a near-daily basis after witnessing an “atrocious” incident in a shop yesterday.
Describing the incident on Lunchtime Live, Andrea said she had gone into a shop to get stamps and coffee while waiting for a bus.
“While I was buying the stamp at the post office at the back of the shop, I could hear some commotion going on at the front door,” she said.
“I turned around and I could see there was a couple of young lads being pulled out of the shop.
“I don’t know what happened but the two shop assistants put them out and then forcibly themselves had to shut and close the sliding doors.”
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By the time Andrea was at the till to pay for her coffee, “seven or eight lads” returned to the shop.
“As they're coming through the doors, they're starting to pull up scarves, jumpers up over their mouths, up over their noses, pulling up the hood of their coats,” she explained.
“Your instant thought when you see this is ‘What’s going to kick off here?’.
“Everybody just stopped in their tracks.”
Andrea explained one of the boys ran towards the till, where a worker was standing.
“He had what looked like a plastic bottle, like a dispenser bottle or cleaning bottle but it wasn't marked or branded with any label, and he started to spray liquids towards the shopkeeper behind the counter,” she said.
“Nobody knew what it was – was it acid or urine? I couldn’t tell you.”
Intimidation on a daily basis
The group then ran out of the shop, and many people checked on the shopkeeper that was sprayed.
“I said to the shopkeepers, ‘Ring the guards’ and he said there's no point,” Andrea said.
“He said it's going to take too long for them to come.”
The shopkeeper, however, pressed the panic button and Gardaí came a few minutes to investigate.
While Andrea does not whether Gardaí were able to track down the group, she said the situation really stuck with her.
“It really struck me after talking to so many shopkeepers here on the show last week... when you hear about the intimidation and the things that they go through on a probably daily basis,” she said.
“It's not about my experience of this but it really hit me looking at the two lads in there working – how are they putting up with this?”
She said neither shop workers or customers should be made to feel intimidated.
