Mr. Seamus Sherlock:

Anything that will help is positive. Local authorities should be more involved. This is a real community problem and it is community that will solve it. We appreciate that crime is not just a rural problem; everybody needs to work on this together. I attended a meeting in west Clare not that long ago at which I met men in their late 60s and early 70s. All they wanted to talk about was crime. They were facing going home down a dark boreen, not sure whether they would make it to the house. That is a shocking way to live but it is a sad fact of rural life. Many of these men and women feel forgotten.

That is what they are saying. They feel that nobody cares about them because they are no longer an asset to their communities. That is very wrong; they are a huge asset. As far as I am concerned, they are the men and women who built this country.

It is correct to say that we have to call the Garda but people's neighbours will be there quickly. I am a farmer and I have often got up at 3 a.m. because one of my neighbour's cows was calving. I would just jump out of bed and go over and give him a hand. I know that 99.9% of people in rural Ireland would not mind jumping out of bed if an elderly or vulnerable neighbour living alone was afraid that someone was outside. We are not for one minute suggesting that people should take the law into their own hands but we cannot stand by and allow our most vulnerable people to suffer in silence.