Stab City debate transcript
We posted a video of the Stab City debate at UL earlier this week. Given its topicality, we’ve produced a transcript, which is posted below. Unfortunately, our transcriber had some difficulty understanding parts of the audio (the quality wasn’t the best), so some words are left as question marks. But the overall meaning should be clear, and all speakers made some very interesting points.
Cllr Diarmuid Scully: Madame Chairperson of the Journalism Society and Madame ??? of the Debate Union. Ladies and gentlemen, I came here tonight with a certain degree of trepidation. Now it’s not because I’m a few months away from a local election and I’m getting in a row with journalists despite the old political adage that you shouldn’t make a row or fight with somebody who buys them by the barrel.
I’m sure that there won’t be any consequences after what I have to say tonight. I’m sure my press releases won’t be left aside while my opponents’ get printed and I won’t be shown with my face constantly scowling or worse still looking as if I’m asleep at meetings while my opponents are shown smiling. I’m sure that sort of thing won’t happen. There’s absolutely no danger of that.
My fear is the nature of the debate itself because we’re debating about Limerick and crime and we’re debating about the image of Limerick and crime and it’s something of a sterile debate. It’s one that really achieves nothing and gets us nowhere. It traps us in this constant cycle of referring to Limerick and crime without ever actually doing anything about it, talking solely about the image and not dealing with the reality. Not dealing with the problems and crimes that actually exist. Not actually trying to tackle them.
So I’ve had a degree of trepidation and worry about this. But it’s hard to say no to your old alma mater. It’s hard to say no to the old Debating Union and I think the clincher was the fact that it was going to be with the Journalism Society so I would get a chance to speak in front of people who may one day be journalists and perhaps finally deal with the Stab City nonsense and put it to bed.
The reality is that there is crime in Limerick and the reality is that crime in Limerick is far too high, as it is in many, many other parts of the country. We need to tackle it. We need to deal with it. Stab City, the mythology, the coverage doesn’t help us deal with crime. It harms us. It is a problem. It is difficult enough not just because Limerick people don’t like it and because it makes us feel bad, it’s a problem because it actively undermines the fight against crime in the city. Now, the name Stab City comes from the 1980’s. It was around even before I went to college here, it’s that old. In fact it was around even before ??? went to college here, it’s that old.
Jerry Stembridge often gets blamed for it but as he himself once said, “I didn’t invent the term, I just sold it door-to-door.” That would have been on Scrap Saturday a radio program in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s. The term was actually invented or first coined by a newspaper, The Limerick Tribune, in reference to a single event that happened outside the what’s now the Trinity Rooms, a nightclub in the city. But it got a place and it became a sort of a shorthand for crime in Limerick.
And the myth of Stab City, and I think anyone looking back on it no matter how they analyze statistics would agree that it was a myth, is that in the 1980’s when Limerick had the lowest crime rate of any city in Ireland it was known as Stab City. That was the myth. That Limerick was seen as being a dangerous place with a higher level of crime than the national average when in fact it was a safe place with a lower level of crime than the national average.
Now how does that myth come across today? It doesn’t come across in the fact that we have the lowest crime rate because we don’t. Nor do we have the highest. The highest crime rate now by any unguarded admission is Dublin. They have that unfortunate distinction. But it does come across in the very strange idea has been put forward — complete nonsense in fact has been put forward by both newspapers represented by the learned gentlemen of the press here tonight both the Irish Times and the Irish Independent both claim that Limerick is the murder capital of Europe.
That is completely and utterly false. It’s simply not true. But, like the Stab City myth, it gains ground, it gains momentum, people start talking about it. Up until a few days ago if you were to look up Wikipedia and look for the answer to the question “what is the most violent city in the world?” the answers would have said Birmingham, Johannesburg and Limerick. Those three cities have a couple things in common. One, I’ve lived in all three. Two, none of them are the most violent city in the world.
The most violent city in the world, not surprisingly if you actually spend two seconds thinking about it, is Baghdad. Doesn’t take a lot of thinking to think about it. Birmingham is not the most violent city in England. Not to mind you Europe. Johannesburg is the most violent city in Africa of those cities which collect crime statistics which is only a tiny minority of African cities. The reality is that you’re far more likely to be murdered in Rossaveal but just nobody would ever know about it. So ???? happens to get a negative bashing.
But Limerick? How the hell did Limerick get in there? Well it was a curious thing about the person who put the post — I corrected that and I put up actually it’s Baghdad and made my various points and the person who’d originally posted them, who’d done it in a very curious way as sort of more in ??? than in anger “I’m sad to say that it’s Limerick. Isn’t it terrible?” wrote back, called me a hypocrite, said that “I had all over Limerick, I’ve been all over ??? The place is full of druggies and scumbags. I hate it.”
So this was the standard of objective Wikipedia-style journalism. Thankfully being Wikipedia you can simply delete everything that you’ve written and put down the correct answer as Baghdad and move on. However, that same person had asked themselves the question and answered themselves “what’s the most violent city in Europe” and this is where they showed where they got the information.
Where they got the information from was a Sunday Independent article. A Sunday Independent article from April of this year and it is one of the most extraordinary pieces of journalism ever written in Ireland. It is absolute and utter nonsense. I have it here. The headline is “Limerick is now the official murder capital of Europe”. And “murder capital” is in inverted commas. God knows why. Europe should actually be in inverted commas because the next line talks about “it being the murder capital of Western Europe”, which of course you’ll never find. Perhaps you could put Limerick in inverted commas. Perhaps in fact you could put newspaper in inverted commas.
They talk and it begins “the latest murders in Limerick have tipped the statistical scales and made the feud blighted city in the murder capital of Europe. The ???? city has the highest per capita homicide rate in Western Europe overtaking Glasgow to claim that dubious distinction.” The people in Naples would be very surprised to find that Glasgow is a more dangerous city than theirs and that Limerick is even more dangerous than that.
It then goes on to talk about other dangerous places like Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia which are now obviously part of Western Europe although they weren’t a short time ago. It’s an extraordinary article in that it messes about and merges all of these things. And then it quotes figures. Where it got them from? It got them from the CSO. That blessed sacred organization the CSO which gave ???? And it’s amazing. The CSO are an incredible organization if on the 30th of April they give accurate crime statistics for 2008.
No. Please. I will take you in a minute but this is very important. What has actually happened is that the Sunday Independent took the crime statistics for the Limerick Garda division, population 175,304 people. They then divided it by the population of Limerick city according to the census, 52,560, and came up with murder rate out of all proportion to reality. That’s like taking the situation whereby when that poor lady, Patricia Furlong was murdered in Glencullen in County Wicklow and saying, “There’s been one murder in Glencullen with a population of 467. Therefore Glencullen has a murder rate of 214 per 100,000 people. That makes Glencullen the most dangerous place in the world.”
Of course it doesn’t. It’s stuff and nonsense. In fact in because they had two murders in 1998 with a population of 821 giving them a murder rate that is the highest in the world of 244 per 100,000. Is that accurate? No! It’s rubbish. It’s complete and utter nonsense but what the Sunday Independent wrote is complete and utter nonsense. I’m sorry but I am going to continue because… you have to ask the question why would a newspaper write such total rubbish? Why would they do that? And the answer is in the last paragraph.
These figures — these figures? These made up figures — contrast with claims made in a seminar organized by the press office of Limerick last Thursday that elements of the media were primarily concerned with tarnishing Limerick’s reputation in the press. This is not journalism. This is a newspaper getting ticked off because somebody told them off. This is a newspaper having a go at the Press Office and those who would dare question their divine right to impose their view. And what was the thing that they were ticked off about? A complete and naked lie.
Where they claimed that a gunman had turned up at a graveyard ready to shoot people and that he was arrested by the guards. Didn’t happen. There was no arrest, there was no incident, it never occurred. Yet it was reported on the front page of this non-tabloid newspaper, the independent newspapers, and we got this incredible coverage, once again, as if ????????? ???????? ?????????
I know there’s crime in Limerick. I know there’s difficulties. I want to see them solved. I stood here at a debate five years ago with Vincent Browne said when he tried to tell me there was no crime whatsoever and if only we got rid of all the Gardia we’d get rid of all the crime. I don’t follow that but the reality is that what you have here is bad journalism. Pure and simple.
Good journalism is a noble calling. Good journalism speaks to the power. Good journalism defends the public interest. Good journalism investigates and exposes wrongdoing. Good journalism informs the public of difficult and complex issues. And good journalism – no I do think it’s important to draw this distinction in fairness. I am aware of that but I was invited and if you don’t mind. I will gladly allow the same amount of time to everybody else. Good journalism is a high-risk profession.
???? here has risked jail as an example of somebody who has done that. Other journalists have reached ??? and we have seen good journalism in Limerick. I think Kathy Sheridan’s articles on the incidents in White ??? have been very good examples of that.
And we had bad journalism in ?? ???? earlier when she actually turned around and said, “Don’t blame us. Blame the people. They’re the ones who want to buy what we write.” That’s bad journalism. It panders to power. It panders to the lowest ??? wrongdoing and it confuses the public and that’s a trap that’s very easy to fall into. I did it myself once. I was once a bad journalist. I wrote a newspaper, edited it, wrote it, the whole lot. ??? ???? ??? Waterford Institute of Technology’s Student Union but I was briefly helping them out. And the tyranny of the empty page is extraordinary. You’re actually faced with this image you’ve got to get completed, got to get it out there. ??? copy to fill it up.
There’s only so many articles, only so much news so somebody suggested horoscopes. So I wrote horoscopes until somebody one day came in and asked me “how exactly do you cast a horoscope?” And I said, “I don’t. I make them up.” At which point I was taken to task and quite rightly because people were reading what I was writing. I will wrap up but as you are well aware it is very, very hard in any forum to get across the truth to come about…come up with the seven more speakers come up with the same dodgy statistics, the same false statistics and I also want to make one other point which is why I had trepidation about coming here. Which was because once again we’re into this debate.
And I took this position when I was Mayor of Limerick whereby a neighbor of mine happened to win a great large of money in the lottery. Dolores McNamara 140 million euros. Article in the Observer newspaper claimed that St. Patrick’s Road where she lived and I lived, was a place where kidnappings, drive by shootings and petrol bombings are a daily occurrence.
None of those things had ever happened. It was a complete, total and utter lie and they printed that and they got away with it. And my response was wrong. I came back to them and I said, “That’s a lie. That’s wrong and you shouldn’t have printed it. It is inaccurate.”
And I wound up in a silly sterile debate about Limerick and crime. Of course, what I should have said was St Patrick’s Road is a wonderful place. Walk on about. You will find ??? ????? comes from. It’s where ???? comes from. It’s where Fairview Rangers the top junior soccer club in the country comes from. It’s where from William of Orange siege of Limerick. It’s where ???? won the first ???? day of victory on the ??? . It’s a vibrant, thriving, living community, we’re delighted one of our members has won an awful lot of money and please go away and stop writing lies about us. And that would be my message to the media up there: “Please go away and stop writing lies about us.” Thank you very much.
Host: Madame Speaker, against the motion is the Irish Independent’s correspondent, Barry Duggan.
Barry Duggan: Thank you Madame Chairperson, members of the opposition and proposition. Just for your information I didn’t write that Sunday Independent article in print that he refers to. Like most reporters, I wrote it as an article before and so I’m just going to try and read from this so please forgive me if I don’t ???
The unwanted epitaph Stab City is the most infamous nickname ever given to an Irish city. It has long been attached to Limerick and is a reputation that city officials and civic leaders are constantly trying to shed. However, to blame the media for inventing this is far too easy. When the term Stab City is discussed in pubs, radio stations and indeed lecture halls its connotations are far wider and it comes at much more than the sharp end of a knife or a blade.
Serious crime and gangland violence have seen to this. Indeed one could argue that the term is now outdated and all you have to do is venture into the streets of Limerick any day to hear that cruel and sarcastic phrase “shotgun city” adopted on a much more regular basis by the younger generations. To understand the ???? of Limerick as Stab City we must look at its genesis.
Diarmuid mentioned about Scrap Saturday and it’s true. That was one of the first mentions of Stab City. To go back to 1983 you’ll find it again. There it was also a recurrence of the nickname. Thomas Coleman was stabbed to death in October 1982 and no one was convicted of this. Two months later, brothers Thomas and Sammy McCarthy died from stab wounds after a pub fight broke out between the pair in the ????. Now such was the fear of the person who was responsible for this murder that every person who was witness to this said they were in the toilets at the time. More than 60 people were in the pub toilets on the night the brothers were killed.
With the city still reeling from the death of three local men the country was left shocked when on Christmas Eve a Libyan student walking in the center city was stabbed to death with a screwdriver. Revulsion spread around the nation at the death of the foreign student and the worst nickname ever given to a city was born. It was born from events in the city and not from the country’s news source. Not false statistics.
Come the 1990’s Limerick acquired a proportionately higher stab related homicide than any ??? in Ireland for intervening years. In 1994 of the total number of homicides which took place in Limerick 75% of them were stabbings. The countrywide proportion of homicides due to stab wounds for the same year was markedly less at 26%. These are Gardia statistics. In 2004 disproportionate Limerick fell to 43% but this is still far greater than the number of stabbings in the country from the same years, 23%.
Now almost 20 years after it originated the unwanted term still stuck and cases coming before the local district court testified to the amount of knives used and carried by the city’s criminals. In July 2001, Judge Tom O’Donnell who’s still the sitting judge here in Limerick, wondered aloud whether Limerick deserved its nickname before he jailed a man for a double stabbing in a late night??
Judge O’Donnell said, “It never ceases to amaze me the fact that citizens cannot go about their business in Limerick or for an evening’s entertainment without someone somewhere producing a knife. This city is very badly for this type of thing. I sometimes wonder if Limerick deserved the name due to a variety of weapons that are available at night on the streets of Limerick. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of assaults with a knife in Limerick city”, Judge Tom O’Donnell said.
That’s not made up. There were so many cases before the same judge that he vowed to jail anyone with this charge as an offense in the city in a bid to take knives off the street. This same judge is still sitting in Limerick and he still is continuing the same policies. It’s not a media myth.
However, far more sinister criminal elements has now come out to the streets after the Stab City phrase was coined and it was their activities and greed which has given Limerick a far worse reputation than anything that preceded it. In recent terms, the term Stab City still ??? is still the center of jokes but generally from people outside Limerick. However this is more in reference to the rise in shootings and the illegal discharge of firearms that has occurred in the last eight years.
Stab City seems pointless to the all-violent crimes as criminals turn to shotguns and handguns as opposed to using the knife. Now both former chief superintendant Jerry Kelly and his successor Chief Superintendant Willy Keane have admitted there is a disproportionately high number of shootings in Limerick city compared to any other Irish urban center. That’s not false statistics. In 2005, Limerick which accounted for 1.4% of the population, 2% if you undertake the ??? district possibly a bit more, made up over 25% of the state’s gun crimes with 83 shootings recorded in Limerick city of the country’s total 330.
They’re not false statistics. The city’s war on gangs ???? more serious problems than authorities in the country have ever had to tackle. Limerick was forced ??? from central criminal court outside of Dublin due to the high amount of murder cases. Such was the fear of the city’s criminals the court failed to find 12 eligible people from a total of 529 jurors which it summoned for a majority panel for the 2003 Kieran Keane trial. They’re not false statistics. Ineligibility, knowledge of people involved in the trial and an unusually high proportion of sick notes meant that the trial could not proceed in Limerick to the high embarrassment of the state. ???? secured a major victory. The emergency response unit had to ??? in a variety of intervening periods which was never before seen in an Irish city and the states’ first fully armed and specially trained Gardia unit respond to major crime situations was applied to Limerick last month.
Katy’s touched on the figures in the past but for the years 2006, 2007 official Guardia figures showed 185 shooting incidents in Limerick. The same years in Dublin ten times, twelve times the population 238. That’s not false statistics. The problem with organized crime has become so serious that the state has had to intervene in a bid to nip the problem in the bud and address social economic and fiscal issues Over 3000 houses are to be demolished and rebuilt in a radical ten-year program that will cost the country well in excess of 1.8 billion Euros.
While AK-47’s sub machine guns, grenade petrol bombs, sawed off shotguns, and ???? pistols have replaced the knife and blade in the violent stakes, the city is still attempting to tackle a serious crime problem, which until it’s eliminated will continue to stain and cast a cloud over the modern and vital city with her proud people who cannot point a finger of blame at the media for the term Stab City. Of course the term Stab City does not sit easily with anybody with an affinity for the proud city of Limerick. As representatives and elected officials of Limerick do their utmost to contract what’s ????? is based in reality and other reports as others here purport to do is inaccurate which ignores that Limerick has a serious problem in certain areas and fails to recognize that the serious measures need to be taken should be taken.
The very fact that the largest regeneration scheme ever undertaken in the history of the state is testament to the very real specific problems that some wards of the city have. This week the city’s regeneration agencies asked the government for 1.8 billion Euros to address social disadvantage and all that goes with it, including crime, during a very serious economic downturn. To deny that term is based on any reality beyond the media says there is not acknowledgement that Limerick has a problem. And that, ladies and gentlemen, does a greater disservice to the reputation of this eminent city than the damage being done by those who wield the weapons.
Speaker 2: Madame Chairperson, Madame ???? and ladies and gentlemen, I’m the Press and Publicity Officer for the city of Limerick and my job is to make sure that Limerick is in the headlines for all right reasons.
And that’s difficult. Not because Limerick is a crime-ridden city, as Barry and friends might have us believe. But because it’s not always easy to get a fair crack of the whip from the media which helped create that perception. And I don’t say that lightly because I was a journalist for the last ten years. I worked on news desk sin both local and national media, both print and broadcast and I know that most hard news is bad news. And bad news stories about Limerick sell newspaper.
For example, every time the Evening Herald puts wife killer Joe O’Reilly it goes up 2000 copies. And news desks in Dublin feed the perception that Limerick is Stab City. If there’s a crime story and it’s in Limerick that story will immediately be given more prominence. And that’s not just me saying it. I spoke to a former national newspaper correspondent who was based in Limerick for a few years tonight, when I was telling him about tonight, and he told me that if he sent up four positive news stories to his news desk in Dublin and one negative news story it would be the negative story that would be used.
And it’s not that the Dublin news desks have an agenda against Limerick. I don’t believe that. But whether they realize they’re doing it or not, they see Limerick news and crime as going hand in hand. Now yes, Limerick has a problem with crime like every other Irish city. I’m not naïve to think that it doesn’t. But we’re dealing with it. And If Limerick is to be called Stab City in 2008 you would expect a 2008 statistic to back that up. Expect to hear about some fatal stabbings that happened in Limerick this year. But there haven’t been any fatal stabbings in Limerick this year. In fact, crime is down 70% and the Guardia are winning the battle.
Of the 12 people who died in gangland killings across Ireland this year, nine happened in Dublin, one was in Donegal, one was in Sligo and two happened in Limerick. There’s been a huge increase in the numbers of Guardia in the city which has directly influenced the crackdown in violence and criminal activity. And yes, a lot of violent crimes, a lot of dreadful crimes have happened in Limerick but you have to remember as well, you have to put that in perspective. Limerick has the biggest percentage of public housing in the country and most of the crime in Limerick is confined to certain areas. Now obviously crime is not acceptable wherever it takes place but as I said it should be kept in perspective in terms of the city as a whole. And it is safe to walk down O’Connell Street. For any of you who have just arrived in UL as first year students or for those who are returning have to UL to study this semester, you’re not going to get stabbed or murdered walking down O’Connell Street in Limerick. So of the entire population of the city and the greater Limerick area, now that’s around 100,000 people, there are about 80 or 90 people involved in feuding. That’s 80 or 80 people out of 100,000. And sadly as you’ve heard already, this has tarnished the reputation for the 99% of good ordinary decent people who live here.
Now obviously there’s also a crime problem in the working class areas of Dublin and other cities like Galway and Cork but I think Limerick is unique in that there is a very active media and a very accessible Guardia force. And it’s not the fault of the local journalists here. They do a very good job. They report both good and bad news. But I know from journalist friends who work in Galway that the Guardia there don’t talk to the press half as much as they do in Limerick. And the Galway Chamber of Commerce is determined that no bad news stories overshadow Galway’s reputation as a premier tourist hot spot. But there are a lot of positive things that happen in Limerick. And it’s very difficult to get national media coverage for it and I know that because I do that every day. And one local journalist I know who rings a national station regularly with Limerick news I asked him if he ever rang with good news and he said, “No.” “Why not?” “Because they don’t want it. The news desks in Dublin associate Limerick with bad news.”
Similarly, a photographer I spoke to before this evening says who supplies all the national newspaper in Dublin with pictures says if he has a fantastic photograph of positive event that’s happening here with some publications — and I stress some publications –- it’s very rare that they’ll use it. I think the main problem is there’s a big gap between perception of Limerick and their experience of it.
I’m only in this job less than two months and when I left to Dublin two months ago people said to me, “Are you off your head? Why are you moving to Limerick? You’ll be shot. You’ll just never come back.” But the reality is I gave up a job – a good job in the big smoke – to move from a crime-ridden city to a very nice city where it takes me 20 minutes to get to work instead of an hour and a half on the M-50. Where it’s the cheapest place in the country to buy a house. Where the people here have the second highest disposable income in the country. And those statistics are from the latest economic report which is Jim Harris statistics not mine. And the ignorance of some people in the media and the perception of the city was nowhere more apparent as Diarmuid said earlier, when Dolores McNamara won her fortune, her 115 million euro. As Diarmuid said, the Observer headline was “One way ticket out of Stab City.”
Graham Norton too used the term trying to be funny on his chat show but Terry Wogan very quickly shut him up, proud Limerick man. Then of course the Sunday Indo article which is always a handy one where no one can give an accurate population figure for a city whose actual urban area straddles three local authority boundaries. And then there was Brenda Carr in the Daily Mail writing about some assassination attempt in Russia when she said, “a thug from Limerick could have done it without half the fuss.” Just another piece about Limerick using the term ??? Why not? Isn’t it easy to take a shot?
We’re all running around with ghosts in Limerick. It’s just lazy journalism. Last Wednesday in Limerick the travel program New Frontiers was here to film a piece for its upcoming series. Now it won’t be shown until next year but the last time a major travel program came here it was the ITV program Wish You Were Here, you’re probably all familiar with it, and it featured Limerick. And the Sunday Times did a hilarious caricature of the city when it was featured on the program. Broadcaster Sean McCreef on ??? at the time did a recreation of it slagging us off again, saying what Limerick lacks in celebrity glitz and glamour it makes up for in “scumosity” and ??? people can expect to be murdered by the end of the month.
So to conclude, in 2008 the people of Limerick can be forgiven for thinking that our notorious nickname has finally been consigned to the past, the joke has just about lost its force. Our crime rates have plummeted here. Many people have worked so hard to shake off that old image. We have an ambitious new center city strategy. a fantastic university. I’m proud as a graduate here, that you’re all proud of, a shiny new rugby stadium that’s the envy of the country and a billion euro regeneration project that’s on target. So for those lazy commentators and the opposition who want to use tired old labels like Stab City, I say get over it. Get over it. The city is putting its best foot forward and promoting the positives and to hell with the begrudgers. Limerick has moved on.
Again would you just respect the speakers and stay quiet. Our next speaker is Colm Keana who’s Times journalist. He’s probably our best-known journalists ????
Colm Keana: Thanks very much. Thank you. I’d like to say thought that I think that the idea that the people who work in the various media organizations in Ireland have some idea that they’d like to do Limerick down is a preposterous and ridiculous idea and most people probably don’t have a view one way or the other Limerick and most people probably don’t have a view one way or the other of Limerick and its reputation.
The job of journalism isn’t to make people feel good about where they live or to try to manipulate people’s ideas. Journalism should expose problems and I think people who try to belittle the extent of the crime problem in Limerick are doing a disservice to Limerick. And we’ve had a couple of speakers now who are speaking on my side of the debate speak about the statistics and, in my mind, they really are quite shocking and it used to involve a lot of knives and now it involves a lot guns.
I got some of the notes from my colleague, Connor Lally, our crime reporter on the Limerick feud that’s been going on here since 2001 — 2000 rather. I’ll just run by you a little bit of the introduction. In the 1990’s Limerick boasted the only major drug scene outside Dublin. It was quite small. Unlike the capital it was controlled by a relatively small number of criminals. Chief among them were brothers Christian and Kieran Keane from their base in ??? estate they ???? they led their drug trades.
They laundered money by buying houses in the estate and they terrified people on the estate. They were supported by a drug dealer in their activities by a right hand man called Eddie Ryan who was a real hard man and enforcer who was done for manslaughter when he was 17 years old. But he began to represent his junior role in the gang. What happened next was a fight between teenage girls in each family broke out in the school playground in 2000. I mean it’s really pathetic. This resulted in an organized fight between two gangs, basically represented by families. A girl’s ear was bit. She lost part of her ear.
There followed a number of street fights between women in ???? . In October John Ryan’s house was shot at. Then Ryan went to see Christy Keane. When he got to his nephew Owen Tracey’s house there was an exchange of gunfire between the two factions. Then there was an attempt to kill Keane as he was waiting for his son to come out of school. Eventually Eddie Ryan was shot dead in a bar, November the twelfth 2000 and after that a feud started.
Now I won’t list them all now but there was in January 2003 there were these people kidnapped and then other members, associates there, lured to a place called Drumbannon on the outskirts of Limerick. Kieran Keane, 36, was shot dead. His hands were tied and he was shot in the head. His nephew Owen Tracey, 31, was stabbed repeatedly during the fight but he survived. The people who were trying to kill him believed he was dead and he walked away. So it goes on.
This year Mark Maloney was shot in a drive by shooting and it seems that a fellow called James Cronin who’s 20 and from Balnycore???? in Limerick, he was part of the operation and he seemed to have gotten upset by what had occurred and the people he was with decided that he wasn’t tough enough; he might speak to the Guardia. So they shot him and put him in a shallow grave near High Grove Limerick. Now one of the things that my colleague tells me about this feud is that in Dublin there’s a huge drug trade compared to Limerick and people are shot in rows over money and rows over control. People are shot if they believe that there snitches. If they have control of a lot of cocaine or whatever and they’re caught by the police and they lose the drugs they can be shot. And it’s an awful problem.
But in Limerick, in Limerick there’s a tendency for people who are abducted and killed to be tortured beforehand. It happens more often down here than it happens up in Dublin. People are sometimes mutilated with knives and then shot. I think instead of people worrying about the media and writing about the crime problem in Limerick and trying to argue that it’s unfair, the people in Limerick might be a bit annoyed I think at why the question “why does this happen?” is not the dominant question because I think there should be. There’s a territoriality about the violence in Limerick. There’s a viciousness, disregard for the sanctity of human life, disregard among people for their own lives and I think the question has to be asked Why? Why in the particular nature violence? People offer ideas in the regard. The ideas being that these estates were built, really badly planned…
Diarmuid: And I suggest one of the reasons that happens is the glamorization of the lifestyle. And that happens because of the lure of reporting. When you think about the….
Keana: I don’t think it follows that people…for instance, we’re not glamorizing what’s happening in Limerick any more than we’re glamorizing what’s happening in ???? and ????. And there’s a particular nature of what’s happening in Limerick and were these estates built that shouldn’t have been built without these facilities.
There were government programs that encouraged people who are better able to cope with life to leave their houses and buy houses elsewhere. I think there must be other issues that have to be investigated and have to be identified in order to help the people who live in these estates and whose lives must be miserable. Must be really miserable. There’s no point in trying to bury our heads in the sand. These people need help. And it’s partly as a result of good reporting, going down and reporting what’s occurring in Limerick, that we have the regeneration program and we have these large amounts of money going into these regeneration programs.
So I’d just like to finish off with some quotes from Brendan Kenny who’s the chief executive of the two regeneration agencies for Limerick and South Hill. This is a report from November 2007 in the Irish Times. He said,”there are 100 children who had not attended school in the last two months. The state of social problems faced by the residents is appalling.”
He said that he’d spent 27 years working in cities, including Dublin, and the social issues in these areas are the most appalling and the worst he’d ever come across and he considers them to be very frightening and it’s because…it’s extraordinary that a whole area, two whole areas, are being knocked down just because the problems are so endemic and personally I feel that this tragedy in these areas has come and gone without really why what happened being identified and you’d be much better off focusing on that than complaining about the media bringing the fact of these issues to everybody’s attention. Thank you.