Kerry TD Danny Healy-Rae will make formal complaint after being 'pushed by garda' before All-Ireland final

Danny Healy-Rae has vowed to make a formal complaint after allegedly being pushed by a garda before Sunday's All-Ireland final. The Kerry TD said he "guaranteed" he would be raising the incident, which occurred in Dublin city centre.

The Independent TD told the Irish Mirror yesterday: "we did not deserve that." The politician was with dozens of fellow Kerry GAA fans in the Cathedral Street area of the inner city when the incident happened.

The incident was caught on camera and was posted online, and quickly went viral. By last night, it had racked up around 100,000 views on social media sites.

The footage appears to show a uniformed garda using one hand to move Deputy Healy-Rae away from him. The incident started when hundreds of Kerry fans were lining the street ahead of the Croke Park showdown with Donegal for Sam Maguire, which the Kingdom county would go on to win.

Several fans noticed Deputy Healy-Rae, who was wearing a Kerry hat and lanyard, walking along the street. He acknowledged the cheers and waved to the fans before walking a few yards. He stopped to wave to fans again, before turning to walk down the street.

The two men walk close to each other, before the garda appears to stick out a hand to move the deputy out of his way. The garda then walks on, but a clearly upset Deputy Healy-Rae goes back to approach the officer. The two men talk to each other for a few seconds before they go their separate ways, while the crowd starts booing.

(Image: Collins)

Speaking after Kerry's 1-26 to 0-19 victory over Donegal, Deputy Healy-Rae expressed his disappointment in the officer's actions. He said he would make a complaint on Monday morning. Fiosru, the independent policing watchdog, handles such complaints.

He said: "I will tomorrow. I am too busy today, I have a lot of calls there to answer and stuff. I will tomorrow, guaranteed, because we did not deserve that. We came up for no trouble - we came up supporting our team. I expected better from the gardai."

The Kerry TD praised the other gardai on duty. He said: "There were other lovely gardai there and they were doing their duty."

Deputy Healy-Rae said he had been inundated with comments from other Kerry fans including those who witnessed the incident. He said: "They are all talking to me about it. They booed the garda and everything at that stage. I am disappointed with his behavior. I did nothing to deserve that. There was no trouble. I just don't know."

A Garda spokeswoman said: "An Garda Síochána does not comment on unverified social media content. Any person who wishes to report the conduct of a member of An Garda Síochána can do so by contacting Fiosrú."

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