Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I just want to echo Senator Dooley’s concerns about the shooting incidents last night. I am from Finglas originally and I grew up there. It is a great community. It is not the set of “Love/Hate”. It is a real community with real people. We should be appalled, as legislators, at the casual manner in which a 21-year-old was shot in a car on Cardiffsbridge Road - and then the killing of a man in Ronanstown in Clondalkin last night. According to initial reports, six to eight shots were discharged in rapid succession. As is very often the case with these shootings, there is a person who is high on drugs - polysubstance abuse - and they are using a weapon very often like these Glock automatic pistols. They are weapons that are designed for conventional combat and they have a planning range of between 30 m and 50 m. They were discharged, in the case of the Ronanstown incident, outside a family home, where there are children, neighbours and people sleeping. It is unacceptable.

At the moment, Ireland has a homicide rate roughly the European average of about 0.7 per 100,000 people. However, that statistic masks an underlying trend that is deeply disturbing. For example, in Ireland between 2005 and 2015, 201 Irish citizens were murdered by firearm. In the same period in the UK, which has a population approaching 80 million people, only 450 were killed by firearms. Homicide by firearm, or gun killings, in Ireland are five times the European average. Think about that as legislators - five times the European average.

The principal victims are young men with criminal convictions. We did not tolerate that level of gun crime during the Troubles. I suspect this was partially because legislators, Senators, Deputies, judges and senior police officers felt that they might be targets. However, because it is happening in our working-class communities and because it is happening to young men, we are allowing this situation to get a grip in our communities. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 38% of Ireland's homicides are by firearm. This year, we have had seven gun killings, five of which were drug-related. We have also had countless shooting incidents where, by a miracle, there have been no fatalities. These communities are being intimidated by these gangs. This is narco-terrorism and these are groups that have links to the Lyra McKee shootings and the shooting of gardaí up around Dundalk. There is an intimate link between organised crime, drug trafficking, people trafficking and these type of shootings and we should not allow them to intimidate good communities and the great people of places like Finglas and Clondalkin. We should not abandon them to this rule by force and intimidation. I agree with Senator Dooley that the answer to this is not to arm the Garda but to get the guns out of our communities and away from those young people. We need increased investment in education, a health-led approach to drugs and so on. I hope that some time in the new year we could get the Minister for Justice to come in to debate this because gun culture and the disproportionate number of homicides by firearm is a sinister problem that is getting a grip in Ireland.