A screwdriver through the head and a coach-and-four through the law
This vigil was extremely important as it allowed the community to show its sympathy and support for the victims’ families. It was also a peaceful way to show we are not all savages, unlike those who committed the murders.
What finally made me put pen to paper was RTÉ’s Questions & Answers (March 3). There are many theories as to why this brutal act was carried out, but most are myths which need to be shattered to silence the politically correct fools who try to explain away violent crimes of this kind.
Five of the myths are:
1. “There is nothing to do”
We have football fields, hurling, after-school clubs, scouts, swimming pools and playgrounds in the Drimnagh/Crumlin area.
Ever before these facilities existed, families raised their children well to appreciate and respect what they had. It doesn’t cost an arm or a leg to buy a football or hurley or a deck of cards.
What it does cost is time. Time to teach children how to play and occupy themselves... time which many parents couldn’t be bothered to put into their children anymore.
These parents would rather the State, the community or the school take responsibility for their upbringing. Well, people who work hard to raise their children to be good and compassionate human beings have had their fill of this extra burden.
2. “There was no racist element to this attack”
The two men may not have been attacked specifically because they were Polish, but there is little doubt they were attacked because they were not Irish.
These men were easy prey with accents to easily identify themselves as “not from around here”, and therefore easy victims to target because they didn’t have the wherewithal to deal with yobs that Irish people would possess, having lived with them all their lives.
They didn’t have the advantage of knowing the devil the way we do.
We need to wake up to the level of racist comment muttered and hate crime committed daily against non-Irish people here. It never makes news because it’s considered low-level crime.
Everyone can agree with Fr Martin Cosgrove when he said the Drimnagh community had run out of words to describe their revulsion, but I could not agree with him when he said it wasn’t racist: I know Polish people who have experienced racist comments from Irish people where they live, where they shop and where they go swimming.
3. “It was a crime committed on impulse”
This was an act of will if ever there was one. It takes very conscious decision-making to go back to one’s house and fetch a screwdriver and return to the scene to drive it into the neck of an innocent person who has challenged your behaviour. It’s very clear these thugs have never had their behaviour challenged by anyone and, when someone finally did, they weren’t prepared to take it or “lose face”.
4. “Drink was to blame”
There’s probably not a teenager in the land who hasn’t at some point gone behind his or her parents’ backs and consumed drink, but would never go out and attack people, never mind ram a screwdriver through them.
In fact it’s unlikely there was drink consumed by the teenagers in question. Many teenagers have a history of aggressive behaviour because they are allowed to become that way and because the law prevents good people intervening in violent attacks.
5. “Poverty is the cause”
Bad behaviour has nothing to do with financial poverty, yet this was suggested by one member of the Questions & Answers panel as a cause. If the truth be known, there is hardly any poverty in Ireland anymore.
Instead we have chronic mismanagement of income and an inability to budget thanks to a system that has for years incentivised laziness and places no obligation on the recipient to take responsibility for that money.
Some of the teenagers who regularly hang around the chip shop in question are known to spend on average from €6 to €8 a night on fast food. They are there from five to seven nights a week. As a working mum, I don’t have that kind of money to give to my child, nor would I even if I had it. So let’s shatter the myth of social disadvantage being caused by lack of money. Gay Mitchell’s defensive attitude towards the gentleman in the audience (whose own son had been attacked the previous week) made me sick when the MEP dismissed the man’s call for more draconian measures as a “kneejerk reaction.”
This is no kneejerk reaction, but it’s certainly a real kick in the stomach to know that our politicians have no desire to change the law. This is a call that communities across Dublin and the rest of the country have been making for decades, but they have been ignored.
It is the ‘social’ approach that Mitchell, and indeed most of the panel, went on to pontificate about that has caused many parts of our cities to become no-go areas.
And who picks up the bill for these crimes? The taxpayer of course.
It’s so frustrating for communities to have someone who has no experience of what it’s like to grow up in an area under siege, who lives in an area cocooned from what these communities have to suffer night and day, pass laws that make these communities even more of a living hell.
While we have lawmakers, judges, social workers and probation boards certain that their way of tackling the problem is correct (despite the evidence to the contrary), and other models of discipline are wrong, the level of violent crime in Ireland is here to stay.
Ann Stafford
New Ireland Road
Rialto
Dublin 8
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