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Updated: New York:
Feb 28 04:41
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Feb 28 09:41
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Feb 28 18:41
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Dublin Riots Leave Stores, Authorities Counting Cost (Update2)

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The worst violence in Dublin for a quarter century has left stores counting the cost of lost trade and politicians and police calling on the government to look into how hundreds of rioters were able to paralyze the city center.

Retailers in the Irish capital lost about 10 million euros ($11.9 million) from the Feb. 25 violence, according to trade association Retail Ireland. Some store owners are concerned that figure may rise should the country's reputation be damaged after Irish republicans blocked a march by the pro-British loyalists.

``Saturday had a disastrous effect, a huge effect on sales,'' said Phyl Crowley, 52, manager of the Blarney Woollen Mills store on Nassau Street, which shut on Saturday afternoon. ``Tourists are going to go back to the U.S. and tell their friends about the Dublin riots. It gives a very bad overall impression of us.''

Republicans set vehicles alight, looted stores and hurled missiles at police starting on O'Connell Street, the capital's main thoroughfare. The violence was a response to loyalists from Northern Ireland, who had planned to march through the city for the first time in 70 years, before abandoning the event.

Republican Sinn Fein, a breakaway group from the Sinn Fein political movement, organized the protest. Loyalist bands paraded briefly in front of the parliament.

Loyalists say the Irish government has too much influence over Northern Ireland under a 1998 accord that helped start negotiations to end the conflict. The ``Troubles,'' as they are known in Ireland, have claimed at least 3,500 lives since 1969.

Nationalists and republicans want a united Ireland, while unionists and loyalists advocate continued alliance with Britain.

Inquiry

By 2 p.m., two thick black plumes of smoke hung across the city center as cars alongside Trinity College were torched, and police, some on horseback, blocked access to parliament. Rioters smashed windows at outlets including a McDonald's Corp. restaurant on O'Connell Street. A Locker Room sports store was looted.

Forty-one people were arrested, and 14 people were injured during the riots, police said.

Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte said Justice Minister Michael McDowell should order an inquiry into preparations for the march and the level of protests the authorities were anticipating.

``Given the publicity that surrounded the march, I'm surprised the police seemed ill-prepared to deal with the violence that erupted,'' Rabbitte, whose party is the second- biggest opposition political group in Ireland, said in a statement.

`Reconsider Approach'

The Garda Representative Association, which represents police officers, today said there weren't enough officers present to combat the rioters, and also called for an investigation into the handling of the protests.

William Frazer, spokesman for the Families Acting for Innocent Relatives, which organized the march, said the group would meet later today to discuss whether to hold the parade at a later date.

`` We're going to have to have to reconsider our approach. We don't want thousands of Gardai put out on the street to allow us down O'Connell Street,'' Frazer said in an interview on RTE radio in Dublin, referring to Ireland's police force. ``That's not the point of what we are trying to do.''

`Carnage'

Rioters used concrete blocks from building works as missiles, in scenes reminiscent of the 1972 burning of the British Embassy in Dublin and the 1981 riots outside the embassy held as republican hunger strikers died in prisons in the North.

``It was carnage,'' said Sean Doran, 20, who watched as about 300 protesters moved up South Fredrick Street to smash a window at an office belonging to the Progressive Democrats, a political party allied to Fianna Fail in the ruling coalition. ``I've never seen anything like it.''

Many of the rioters carried the green, white and orange Irish flag, and some wore the white and green jersey of Celtic, a Glasgow-based soccer club with links to Ireland.

Some protesters blamed police for the violence. ``They started this with their show of force,'' said Darren Murray, 27, a republican protester as he walked past the shuttered shops on Nassau Street, about 100 yards from Grafton Street, one of Dublin's busiest shopping streets.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said rioters had filled bins in lanes around O'Connell Street with pre-prepared missiles.

Chanting slogans of support for the Irish Republican Army, rioters injured six police officers.

``What our members have told me, those that were on duty and those that were injured, is that there simply weren't enough police present on the day,'' Dermot O'Donnell, head of the Garda Representative Association in Dublin, told state broadcaster RTE.


To contact the reporter on this story:
Dara Doyle in Dublin at  ddoyle1@bloomberg.net;
Fergal O'Brien in Dublin at  fobrien@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: February 27, 2006 09:25 EST

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