Gangland violence: Nothing left to chance during a testing week for gardaí

The sight of heavily armed men in balaclavas packed inside black Landcruisers gave many a passing pedestrian a startle.

Mums out pushing their strollers looked in at the men of the Emergency Response Unit clasping their MP7 machine guns, their eyes glancing in the direction of the gates of St Nicholas of Myra Church in the heart of Dublin’s historic Liberties.

Inside the church was the first of this week’s two gangland funerals — that of David Byrne, a father of two from Crumlin, south Dublin, gunned down at the Regency Hotel last Friday week in a military-style assault.