Hopefully this time, ‘no more’ means no more

SHOTS in the night meant only one thing in Limerick in 2008 — another gangland hit.

Maybe it was ordered to dispose of a competitor, punish a betrayal, or warn against debt default — whatever the reason, the ordinary decent people of Limerick didn’t want to know.

They just wanted it off their doorsteps and, if not stopped, then at least confined to that parallel universe where the lawless live and die in violence and barbarity that is incomprehensible to the majority.

But that night in Nov 2008, the gunshots that broke the sleep of people in the Dooradoyle area would rip through the soul of a community that had tried to build up an immunity to the madness that seethed on its fringes.

Shane Geoghegan was one of their own, an innocent, hard-working, sports-loving son, brother and husband-to-be, murdered yards from his front door as he walked home from watching a rugby match at a friend’s house.

Word came quickly that it was a case of mistaken identity, but in the minds of people in Limerick and the rest of the country, that was only the final, fatal mistake.

It had been a mistake that an entire city had been allowed to be held hostage by a handful of thugs. It was a mistake to believe they would be kept too busy killing each other to bring their bloody mayhem to the wider community. It was a mistake to accept that armed police patrols should become a normal part of the streetscape. It was a mistake not to demand more of the authorities.

The reaction to Shane’s death was extraordinary. Thousands lined the streets for his funeral, minutes of silence were observed, the Dáil lit up with debate, the Shane Geoghegan Trust was set up to use sports as an outlet and diversion for children, and Limerick County Council held a posthumous civic reception in his honour.

For a time it seemed that the sheer force of feeling about what happened to Shane would be enough to drive out the gunmen and restore the balance of power.

But there had been other such moments. After the shooting dead of Veronica Guerin by John Gilligan’s drugs gang in 1996, the chorus of voices vowing ‘no more’ was deafening. Within days, the Proceeds of Crime Act was drawn up to allow gardaí, who rarely caught criminals red-handed with drugs, catch them instead with unexplained cash and wealth.

The Criminal Assets Bureau was established, a witness protection programme was set up, and the non-jury Special Criminal Court, normally the home of subversives, was put into action trying gang suspects.

But criminality is nothing if not resilient, and although for a while gang activities in Dublin were disrupted, the escalating problems in Limerick cut any celebrations short.

It took an atrocity in that city to refocus attentions. In 2002, security man, Brian Fitzgerald, a 34-year-old father of two, was executed for heroically stopping gang members dealing drugs in the Limerick nightclub where he worked.

The Dáil ignited, there were promises of every resource being made available to gardaí, and of no stone being left unturned in pursuit of his killers. ‘No more’ was again the plea, hope, and promise.

But in the next few years gangland flourished and gun culture with it. In 2006, there was again an outpouring of anguish and anger when 22-year-old Donna Cleary, mother of a 2-year-old boy, died after three men, refused entry to a house party she was attending in Coolock, Dublin, returned with a gun and blasted indiscriminately through the front door and window.

Months later, 20-year-old apprentice plumber Anthony Campbell was shot dead for witnessing the murder of Dublin gang boss Marlo Hyland at the house in Finglas where he happened to have been called out to do repairs. Edward Ward, 24, lost his life in similar circumstances around the same time.

But there was more horror that year. A brother and sister, Millie and Gavin Murray, aged 7 and 5, almost died after their mother declined to drive two local thugs to Limerick District Court. They responded by throwing a petrol bomb into the back seat of her car where the children sat. Their burns were terrible, their suffering appalling and the consequences, both medical and psychological, lifelong.

It seemed pointless hoping there would be no more of the same. Yet when Shane Geoghegan was murdered, the reaction felt like a fight back. His death was declared a watershed, a turning point, the moment when the crime bosses would be shown who was really boss. The new Criminal Justice Act was enacted, increasing the penalties for gang membership and leadership, easing the burden of proof for the prosecution, and putting such trials automatically into the Special Criminal Court.

But a few months later, in early 2009, Roy Collins, was murdered at the family’s arcade business in the city. A nephew had previously provided testimony that helped put a local gang member behind bars and the Collins family was warned one of them would pay.

His father, Steve, spoke out bravely and repeatedly about the tyranny they lived under. The family were put under 24-hour protection but the stress proved intolerable and last year they moved abroad under the Garda relocation programme.

The killings of the innocent have stopped for now but the fear of what might happen has not entirely abated. The relative comfort of presuming shots in the night meant the savage were devouring their own has gone and it will take time and a lot of quiet nights before ‘no more’ is believed to be a real outcome, not a well-meaning mantra.