Time to get real in the fight against crime

IF your headline “McDowell admits gang crime poses threat to State” (Irish Examiner, January 25) is to be taken seriously (and it should be), then every agency of the State needs a wake-up call.

Recently a three-year sentence was imposed on a would-be assassin arrested in Limerick in possession of a loaded pistol (one round up the breech — ready to go) and fitted with silencer.

The ridiculously lenient sentence apparently was partly due to the non-availability of Halal food in our prisons. Utter nonsense, surely.