‘So many young people seem intent on using violence’

EVERY year there’s a knife attack so shocking it disturbs our collective psyche and knocks our sense of the world off kilter.

Last year, it was the deaths of two young Polish men, who had the misfortune of having a minor altercation with a gang of teenagers outside a chip shop in the working class suburb of Drimnagh in south Dublin. It had been a truly horrific attack, in which a screwdriver had been used. The Polish men suffered severe head injuries. The attack took place at tea-time, in broad daylight.

This year, the scene is a settled middle-class enclave, Cuala Grove in Bray, Co Wicklow.