Originally posted by Old Greg
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Irish manufacturing (and agriculture) is big, particularly electronics, pharmaceuticals, optics. There have been some sad departures recently, such as Dell from Limerick.
As for Limerick, it's a lawless sh!thole.
Originally posted by Mayo News
HUMAN life hasn’t just been cheapened in Limerick, it has lost all value. And, most chillingly of all, there are children in this environment who don’t know – and will never know – that it ever had any worth.
If a human being happens to get in the way of the plans of one of the feuding families that controls the city’s lucrative drugs trade, Shakespeare’s reflections on the quality of mercy won’t feature in their thoughts.
In the face of such extreme lawlessness, mediation was last week proposed as a possible solution. Maybe the solicitor John Devane was genuine in his belief that mediation between these feuding families was the best way forward for Limerick, but listening to him speak on the compellingly awful Liveline show last Tuesday (sadly, I missed him on Morning Ireland), I wasn’t convinced. Less convincing, and more infuriating, however, was the priest who was on the show making a similar offer. His name was Fr Terry O’Connell, and his credentials as a potential ace mediator seemed to be based on the fact that he had done ‘extensive research on the players’ in this dispute and he had spent 18 years going in and out of Limerick prison.
He and the late Michael Kelly (a former alderman in Limerick city, who was shot in his mother’s house two years ago and who had ‘gone straight’ in his later years having spent a large portion of his life as a criminal himself) had previously ‘brokered a deal’ between the warring families in the past, he claimed, but it didn’t succeed because the guards didn’t recognise it. What exactly this was supposed to mean wasn’t clear. Did the Gardaí refuse to give the families impunity from prosecution for past murders if they promised not to kill any more members of each other’s families in the future?
Having literally sniggered several times at the guards’ efforts to deal with the situation, and having opined that they ‘misunderstood’ it and that they were incapable of being discreet in their policing of the afflicted areas in Limerick (he could ‘smell them’ even when they were dressed in plain clothes, he said, prompting the thought in my head that maybe he was in the wrong profession himself), Fr O’Connell finally outdid himself in terms of put-downs when he called the Gardaí ‘brain-dead’. Joe Duffy wasn’t inclined to challenge him, but a few subsequent callers to the show did, remarking that they were incensed and incandescent with rage at what the priest was saying. They got a loud cheer from the single occupant of my car.
Thankfully, the Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan, ruled out the possibility of mediation being used as a way of resolving the situation in Limerick, on the grounds that it would give some kind of ‘legitimacy’ to the murderers involved. It would also give further oxygen to the likes of Fr Terry O’Connell and John Devane, a fate we are all blessed to have been spared.
What is happening in Limerick is not a schoolyard squabble or a dispute between stubborn neighbours. It is a vicious cycle of murder into which more and more people are being drawn – and it requires measures that reflect the seriousness of the situation.
The Gardaí there are neither brain-dead nor lacking in understanding; they are hamstrung by the normal laws of the land that were not written with people like the Collopy/Keanes and the McCarthy/Dundons in mind. The Minister faces a difficult task in choosing how to deal with this unparalleled problem. He must ensure that, legally, these criminals can be dealt with as effectively as possible, while at the same time not making a special case out of Limerick and not setting an overly-heavy-handed policing precedent.
Whatever course he chooses, there is no doubt that the legal route is the best one. Mediation works effectively in many instances, as does appealing to the decency of people, but when children as young as 12 are being groomed as thugs and killers, the point where dialogue and diplomacy hold any currency has long since been passed.
If a human being happens to get in the way of the plans of one of the feuding families that controls the city’s lucrative drugs trade, Shakespeare’s reflections on the quality of mercy won’t feature in their thoughts.
In the face of such extreme lawlessness, mediation was last week proposed as a possible solution. Maybe the solicitor John Devane was genuine in his belief that mediation between these feuding families was the best way forward for Limerick, but listening to him speak on the compellingly awful Liveline show last Tuesday (sadly, I missed him on Morning Ireland), I wasn’t convinced. Less convincing, and more infuriating, however, was the priest who was on the show making a similar offer. His name was Fr Terry O’Connell, and his credentials as a potential ace mediator seemed to be based on the fact that he had done ‘extensive research on the players’ in this dispute and he had spent 18 years going in and out of Limerick prison.
He and the late Michael Kelly (a former alderman in Limerick city, who was shot in his mother’s house two years ago and who had ‘gone straight’ in his later years having spent a large portion of his life as a criminal himself) had previously ‘brokered a deal’ between the warring families in the past, he claimed, but it didn’t succeed because the guards didn’t recognise it. What exactly this was supposed to mean wasn’t clear. Did the Gardaí refuse to give the families impunity from prosecution for past murders if they promised not to kill any more members of each other’s families in the future?
Having literally sniggered several times at the guards’ efforts to deal with the situation, and having opined that they ‘misunderstood’ it and that they were incapable of being discreet in their policing of the afflicted areas in Limerick (he could ‘smell them’ even when they were dressed in plain clothes, he said, prompting the thought in my head that maybe he was in the wrong profession himself), Fr O’Connell finally outdid himself in terms of put-downs when he called the Gardaí ‘brain-dead’. Joe Duffy wasn’t inclined to challenge him, but a few subsequent callers to the show did, remarking that they were incensed and incandescent with rage at what the priest was saying. They got a loud cheer from the single occupant of my car.
Thankfully, the Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan, ruled out the possibility of mediation being used as a way of resolving the situation in Limerick, on the grounds that it would give some kind of ‘legitimacy’ to the murderers involved. It would also give further oxygen to the likes of Fr Terry O’Connell and John Devane, a fate we are all blessed to have been spared.
What is happening in Limerick is not a schoolyard squabble or a dispute between stubborn neighbours. It is a vicious cycle of murder into which more and more people are being drawn – and it requires measures that reflect the seriousness of the situation.
The Gardaí there are neither brain-dead nor lacking in understanding; they are hamstrung by the normal laws of the land that were not written with people like the Collopy/Keanes and the McCarthy/Dundons in mind. The Minister faces a difficult task in choosing how to deal with this unparalleled problem. He must ensure that, legally, these criminals can be dealt with as effectively as possible, while at the same time not making a special case out of Limerick and not setting an overly-heavy-handed policing precedent.
Whatever course he chooses, there is no doubt that the legal route is the best one. Mediation works effectively in many instances, as does appealing to the decency of people, but when children as young as 12 are being groomed as thugs and killers, the point where dialogue and diplomacy hold any currency has long since been passed.
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