‘None of us will ever forget the terror of that night’

The Ballyfermot/Tipperary gang, one of the most dangerous in the country, struck the Garvey home in Pallasgreen, Co Limerick on April 16, 2012.

Gerry Garvey, his wife Anne, and their two sets of twins Grace and Gordon, then 16, and Graham and Gillian, then 14, were all at home when masked men armed with a sawn-off shotgun, a sledgehammer, and baseball bats, stormed their house, crashing in through a patio door.

As two men, Christopher Stokes, 42, Knocknaheeny, Cork, and John Cahill, 30, Doon, Co Limerick, complete their fist week in jail on sentences of seven years (Stokes) and five years (Cahill) for aggravated burglary, Mr Garvey, a 54-year-old community development manager in Limerick, has spoken of how the events of that day changed their lives.