Giving two fingers back to the criminals

LIAM KEANE’S two-fingered insult to the nation almost 10 years ago was one of those landmark moments in Irish crime.

The televised images of the Limerick gangster swaggering out of the Central Criminal Court after six prosecution witnesses recanted statements to gardaí implicating him for the murder of 19-year-old Eric Leamy infuriated people.

He was not just abusing the country, he was laughing at it, highlighting the impunity of gangland and the inadequacy of the criminal justice system to deal with it. At the time, justice minister Michael McDowell told the Dáil the case represented a challenge “for the Irish State, for the rights of individual citizens and of entire communities, and for the system of criminal justice”.