Irish Examiner view: Garda appointment is a welcome step to tackling rural crime
Garda Superintendent Michael Corbett has been appointed as An Garda Síochána's first rural crime lead. File picture: Dan Linehan
In debates on crime in Ireland, urban lawlessness can often be the default focus, which is understandable given incidents such as the one in Donaghmede yesterday.
However, a garda appointment this week seeks to address any imbalance implied in that focus.
As reported here by Liz Dunphy, Superintendent Michael Corbett, who is based in Fermoy, was appointed as the first rural crime lead for An Garda Síochána by Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly.
That appointment looks ever more timely in the light of recent violent incidents, and the role is also expected to be central to fighting rural crime and supporting communities across the country.
Communities can be scattered, with a sense of isolation sometimes replacing the comfort of seclusion after rural dwellers become the victims of crime.
Supt Corbett himself pinpointed a couple of specific crimes which are having an impact in parts of rural Ireland: theft and illegal hunting.
“You have stolen machinery coming in from the UK here and vice versa,” he said. “You have stolen farm machinery going up to the North and going across to the UK.
“Illegal hunting and trespassing on farmland is a huge issue at the moment for the farming organisations because you have people... trespassing on property that they don’t have permission to be on and they’re worrying animals and farm livestock.”
He went on to highlight community support as another vital element in the fight against crime, encouraging rural dwellers to check in on older neighbours and to report crimes, however small, to enable gardaí to take action.
It might jar with our lazy stereotypes of life in the country, but the level of crime in rural Ireland needs serious action, just as action is needed in our towns and cities.
This appointment is a welcome move towards counteracting that crime, and reassuring communities which may feel vulnerable.
It has not been an encouraging few weeks for environmental matters in Ireland, and the latest warning from the Climate Change Advisory Council continues that worrying theme.
The council has stated that climate change is making Ireland more and more vulnerable to invasive species, with ready-made examples to hand.
Readers will recall the furore when two large Asian hornet nests were found in Cork recently; taken in conjunction with a sighting of the same insect in Dublin, this suggests that Ireland is becoming more and more vulnerable to these non-native species.
In that context, the council’s call for more ambitious biodiversity conservation and restoration measures — both inside and outside protected areas — might sound somewhat plaintive, not to say vague.
However, it also made a far more direct point when calling on the National Parks and Wildlife Service to deliver its national invasive species management plan, describing that plan as “long overdue”.
The lack of urgency in producing a plan to combat a specific threat to our natural species is sadly characteristic of our State bodies. It is just a few weeks since we had the worst fish kill in the history of the country, when thousands of trout, salmon, and other fish died in the River Blackwater in north Cork.
This is a disaster in and of itself, a hammer blow to the ecology of a large region so severe it is not clear if the affected ecosystem will ever return to its former glory.
The extent of the catastrophe is big enough to plunge any concerned citizen into gloom, but the aftermath may be even worse.
As Jack Power wrote in these pages recently: “To date, it has not been possible, despite the efforts of four State agencies and a visit by minister Timmy Dooley supported by the usual platoon of hangers-on, to identify the origin of the deadly toxin.”
Unpublished plans on one hand, unidentified polluters on the other.
Can we truly say that the State is serious about the environment?
Rory Gallagher’s favourite guitar can be seen at Collins Barracks Dublin's Changing Ireland Galleries from today.
It is just one of over 250 political, social, and cultural objects from the museum’s 20th- and 21st-century collections, with both extraordinary and everyday items to be seen.
For instance, a pair of slippers worn by Michael Collins while on the run during the War of Independence is also on display, though visitors to the exhibition will have to find out for themselves exactly how the most wanted man in Ireland at the time was able to relax in upmarket leisurewear while the crown forces were trying to find him.
Readers may recall more clearly the huge interest in Gallagher’s guitar when it came up for auction at Bonhams in London 12 months ago. At that time it was bought for over €1m by Live Nation Gaiety Ltd, who subsequently donated the guitar to the National Museum. The instrument — a Fender Stratocaster — was originally bought for £100 at Crowley’s music store in Cork back in 1963.
The next question is whether the Changing Ireland exhibition will be moved out of Collins Barracks and taken on the road — the title is not Changing Dublin, after all.
Given how closely Gallagher is identified with Cork, there would surely be a strong argument to have his old guitar exhibited on Leeside.
And Michael Collins’s old slippers as well, come to that.
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