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An armed Garda on the streets of Dublin in February of this year in the wake of the gangland killings of David Byrne and Eddie Hutch Sam Boal
Sam Boal
THE VAST MAJORITY of Irish people would support emergency internment for gangland suspects as a measure to put a stop to the ongoing gun violence being seen in Dublin.
77% of those polled said they would support emergency internment. 11% said they wouldn’t agree with it, with 12% saying that they don’t know.
The news comes in the wake of the murder of Gareth Hutch last week. Hutch was the seventh man murdered in the last eight months as a result of an ongoing feud between the Kinahan and Hutch families in the Dublin area.
The poll also asked people whether or not they have confidence in Noirín O’Sullivan as Garda Commissioner.
41% of respondents said they have no confidence in O’Sullivan. 26% said they do have confidence in the Commissioner, with 33% saying they didn’t know.
Earlier today O’Sullivan released a statement that she had no knowledge of a secret meeting between the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee John McGuinness and former Commissioner Martin Callinan in relation to the Garda whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe.
The poll was conducted by Amárach Research on Monday, 7 March. The survey panel comprises more than 1,000 adults who all own a smartphone. More details here.
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Well, it worked a treat in the Six Counties, didn’t it? A much more effective way would be for the Catholic Church to make it clear that until those gangsters abandon their life of crime and sin, no priest will be allowed to perform funeral services for them.
Those services with their garish displays of flowers made into corny wreaths like “DAD”, etc, are just a further demonstration of ill-gotten wealth and the large sums they undoubtedly pay the priests for officiating are likewise proceeds of crime.
The same policy should be adopted towards the elaborate Holy Communion ceremonies where the gangsters’ children are dressed up like princes and princesses. The message from the Archbishop’s palace must be that the way forward is prayer and good deeds, not crime. Get those gangs together for a few Rosaries every night. Maybe the leading Gardaí could join in as well.
David..in the six counties it was politically sectarian against the catholic population unlike the in the 26 county state it will be aimed against extreme gangster’s.. don’t drag in 6 county catholic population into this…!!!!
its already been proven most people in this country are stupid, ge results prove it byond doubt.
there needs to be a sophisticated approach to gangland crime, but that take forward planning and inteligence rather than sending out more balaclava wearing gun showing off cops to stand around checkpoints all day., waste of time, effort and puts a fear in normal people
these guys need to communicate and gsoc can attest gardai have the hardware/software to eavesdrop at will, not rocket science! Internment just lets them hangout and run up legal bills at exchequer expense.
strange they can block your mobile phone in cinema’s but not jails???
Most Irish people want people in prison for abusing Garai and the public. People would pay more tax if it means they feel secure in their homes and the criminals are locked up. There seems to be 3 times more criminals out and about than there are in the prisons.
Mindfulirish … who is “most Irish people” ?
people want corrupt politicians, and business men, Garda management, Gardai who abuse their authority, corrupt legal profession, and hardcore criminals locked up. What we dont want is to see the Gardai been given more power to be let loose on the general public, who might disagree with government corruption and policy.
Except on the journal, nobody on here wants to pay more tax. If more tax needs to be paid to fix a problem = complain.
If there is a problem because there is no funding from us taxpayers=complain
I think people wouldn’t complain about more tax if they had the services to show for it. We don’t. So they’re in the right to complain, especially when it’s higher tax to bail out corporate gamblers
Stephen exactly. If you want better services you need to pay more tax then. Look at Sweeden, great sevices but average tax at 57% we are at 52% all inclusive. So would you really pay 5% more tax to be like Seeeden’s services? So out of every €100 you earn you can keep €43?
Where did you get the 52% all inclusive figure as an average? I find that a bit excessive considering the average wage is 34,000 or thereabouts, with 2,000 being over the 20% rate? Genuine question
If I earn the average 34000 I pay about 6000 in direct taxation, give or tax 2/300 euro dependent on credits. A marginal rate is a higher end tax paid over a certain income threshold. Now I’m not great with numbers, and I’m not sure what metrics you use, but I’d say your 52% claimed is an IBEC figure that particular to a certain type of earner. I could be wrong
Except that Tasc’s figures are based on % of GDP (which is heavily inflated in Ireland compared to other countries), and except that it doesn’t include:
Unbelievable! Surely the history of this great country has told us that internment is a bad idea. With all the questions around the Gardai at the moment I think not only would it be possible for someone to be interred for something they didn’t do but also that a small few could abuse the new power. Internment is the most undemocratic thing imaginable and I would really hope it is unconstitutional.
Watching Clare Byrne Live it seems most people from the north inner city believe they are the salt of the earth and that they have just been marginalised,disenfranchised,oppressed and abandoned by society and that if every citizen living there is allocated a social worker and enhanced allowances and comprehensive,exhaustive benefits inc education and a future that doesnt include hand-me-downs for their children then they might call it quits…but someone else will have to sort out the gangs…not their problem.
Gang issues extend beyond the north inner city. 95% of these people aren’t the issue here. They’ve no more responsibility to deal with it than you or I
Poverty is a breeding ground for crime. The link has been proven.
If a community is deprived of social infrastructural funding and a feeling of abandonment sets in then the predominant philosophy is one of ‘Fcuk the state – I’m not part of it’ and the rot sets in.
I grew up in a poor working class estate and from day one I never felt part of the Ireland portrayed in popular media. In the community if you wanted something done then you did it yourself.
If money was required then the money was found.
A question of survival.
Cal do you mean to say that those most marginalised areas across the globe tend to have the highest crime rates? You’d almost swear it was a similar case in ghettos around the world from what you’re saying? They should all take responsibility for themselves and get out of poverty using all the supposed free stuff they get
Howya sis….yeah i grew up in the bog…had f##k all…but my old man…and the neighbours,and the aunts,and the uncles,and the cousins,and the local plod…wouldnt let me be a criminal/drug dealer.i was forced to go straight and be a net contributor to society….and now i wont allow my kids be criminals…but thankfully they arent above hand-me-downs.
You didn’t grow up in a ghetto though. What were you realistically gonna rob, some other poor creators peat from down the road? It’s the environment and deprivation that play a factor here. You seem to think they make the conscious decision as teenagers to go on to criminal college and make a living from it. I’m not saying they’re all from “troubled backgrounds” but we are all a product of our environment
Stephen…only ghetto dwellers get to be REAL criminals? Cos all we boggers got is shotguns whereas the ghetto dwellers got glock semis?and all we have to rob is “peat”? And there aint no “environment” if it aint ghetto environment….
Fcuk it. Let’s apply your logic that all people from one particular area are the exact same, exactly the point you made in your first comment. Using that logic, it would be reasonable to believe that all people from “bog land” haven’t a clue about issues within the north inner city and how these issues have developed and come to be over time. We could do that because of a few people from bog land who genuinely haven’t got a clue, and take their opinion as that of the bog landers as a whole. But we wouldn’t do that, as we understand people from bog land aren’t all the same. Some are idiotic, some are not
Can someone explain what emergency internment means? Does that mean locking people up without due process because you’re pretty sure they’re the bad guys?
Replace the word “mildly” with “extremely” and you have the answer. Unless you are seriously on the Garda watchlist for serious criminal behaviour you will be safe, so don’t worry.
It’s similar to how the subversives were beaten in the past by Ireland with the special criminal court and how CAB came about to beat gangland in the 90s by lifting those threatening the rest of us in our communities.
If you look at any regime of interment, innocent people fall through the cracks. Extremes were the first to be locked up, then the milder ones follow. I’d questions who’ll be released to make room for a web of supposed gang members? Prisons are at capacity
Or they be like Irish people who Dev interned during the Second World War at the Curragh camp, for example Máirtín Ó Cadhain, the legislation etc is already in place.
Nothing will happened though because today’s politicians associate interment with the disaster that occur in the North in the early 70′s.
The main issue of course is that the likes of FG are “soft on crime”, they have for years let this build to a head by cutting spending on Gardaí and not providing sufficient prison capacity (revolving door system etc.)
Ironic thing than is that they can turn around and claim with a straight face to be “the party of law and order” (as long as it doesn’t affect good middle class people — note hysteria yesterday in SINDO about private south dublin school students been potential targets!)
Paul , they were IRA men interned at the curragh as they were collaborating with the Nazis as were Sinn Fein at rhe time..
In the early months of the emergency, the greatest threat to the State came from the IRA. In the Christmas Raid in 1939, one million rounds of ammunition were stolen from the Irish Army by the IRA (though it was mostly recovered in the following weeks) and there were a number of killings, mostly of gardai. The government responded with the 1939 and 1940 Offences Against the State Acts, which established the Special Criminal Court, and rearrested and interned IRA activists.
The IRA fostered links with German intelligence (the Abwehr) though these attempts were largely ineffectual due to a combination of Abwehr and Foreign Ministry incompetence and IRA weakness. Germans also came to Ireland, the most notable of whom was Hermann Görtz, who was captured in possession of “Plan Kathleen”- an IRA plan that detailed a German-supported invasion.
Two IRA men were executed for the murder of two gardai in September 1940, and the IRA became increasingly ineffective in the face of the resolute use of internment and the application of hanging for capital offences. During 1941, the hope of a German invasion had faded and funding from the United States had been cut off. The IRA leadership were mostly interned within the Curragh Camp.
Or the people who are absolutely obviously guilty, planning to kill more people, everyone knows who they are but because the judicial system is on their side we have to allow them to ply their trade.
It has its flaws – but the benefits outweigh them.
Don’t be silly Dave. There a huge industry involving legal professionals, social workers, health professionals etc. that depends on the revolving door, reoffending, drug dependency and so on for their livelihood. You can’t just ‘sort the problem’, what’ll these guys do for a living?
Dumb Irish sheep giving the inept police and government more power is not the answer. The government should be afraid of the people not the other way around. Giving up civil liberties in the name of security is not the answer unless you don’t mind living in a facist police state.
“emergency interment” for criminals?? Does anyone think it would stop there? The ideal solution for not paying the water tax, or/and protesting against the government. It’s the thin end of the wedge.
Let the poll be run on the Journal and we’ll see exactly what support it actually has.
Oldest trick in the book. They will use the behaviour of a handful of arse holes to take away more rights from the whole population. Of course all the libtards and nanny staters will cheer them on.
Elma Phudd …. yep, there’s protesting, where you have a jeep reversed into you, be assaulted, doesn’t matter if you’re a woman or an elderly man with a walking stick, it’s not illegal, it’s ok with the Gardai who were present to witness the assaults. In fact the Gardai present, witnesses to the assaults, arrested two elderly men, one who had already been assaulted, and jailed them for more than 2 weeks. The member of FF who carried out the assaults drives away in his jeep, without even a caution.
In Corofin, a gang of masked thugs,and a sherriff, escorted by two members of the Gardai, turn up to repossess a home, there is not warrant for such repossession, and any documents are so far out of date they are irrelevant. But they try it anyway. They rightfully dont succeed, when the fact that the car that carried some of the masked thugs, has no tax, no insurance, no NCT, and has its number plates blanked out, is pointed out to the two Gardai present. The Gardai simply aren’t interested in this breaking of the law. In fact, they drive off with a couple of masked thugs as passengers in the Garda car. How many illegalities can you spot here?
Fascist Police State. And you and other idiots would have no problem seeing internment being brought in. Laughable, if it wasn’t so serious.
Resource the guards properly. Nail us for a tax in a different way if you have to, stop wasting their time checking for it on windshields to begin with. Then sort out the fking courts system. Make it more efficient. Build more of them or burn some of the red tape. That would help a hell of a lot more than fking internment. Great idea if you 100% have the right person for the right thing, but sure isn’t that what the entire court system is about.
‘Shill’. I love that word. It’s a real ‘I’m an unemployed leftie who hates the establishment but has no problem accepting free money from it every week’ sort of word. They all seem to use it.
John gilligan spent 20 years fighting the state for ownership of his ranch jessbrook near johnstownbridge enfield..while IN jail…using free legal aid…the ranch was bought/built with drug money….the fact is gilligan was a cash cow for vested interests who turned a national crisis into a golden opportunity…for a golden circle.
Have the majority of ppl in this country completely lost their minds. First FG are elected as the largest party in the ge, FF regain much of the support they lost in 2011 and now we want to intern people. Have we not realised at this stage that it is not more power we should be giving to the historical institutions of this country its less whether that’s the guards, dail, financial institutions etc. Sure while we’re at it why don’t we let the church sort out the childcare issues we have.
Nice clickbait headline, but it misrepresents the views of the Irish people regarding habeas corpus and their most basic, hard fought civil liberties. We are quite aware of our unhappy history of internment without trial.
As other commenters have mentioned above, a mobile phone survey does not a representative sample make. That carries all the weight of an X factor vote. Shame on you, Journal.ie.
Why not a poll about opinions on the allocation of Garda resources to protect water meters, while all hell is breaking loose in gangland?
Mind boggling that anyone in this country would support the notion of internment without trial. Aside from the fact it is a fundamental breach of human rights, recent history shows us that it doesn’t have the effect those who introduce it had intended.
In the eight months before the introduction of internment in the six counties, there were 34 conflict-related deaths. In just the four months following it, there were 140. It went on to become the most violent year of the conflict. It also leads to an abuse of the power (not that it isn’t fundamentally abusive anyway). Of the 1,981 people interned in the conflict in the six counties, 1,874 were Catholic, the overwhelming majority of whom had no IRA connection whatsoever. Added to that the predictable outcome – the methods used by the British Army to arrest internees and their subsequent torture treatment of many of those held (see current ‘hooded men’ case for an example), led to a literal explosion of violence to a level not seen since the famous riots of August 1969. In the space of just three days following the start of internment, 24 people were killed. 20 of these were civilians, and 17 of these were murdered by the British Army. The burning of homes left 7,000 people, (mostly Catholic) homeless. The ranks of the IRA immediately swelled with new recruits.
And dimwitted freestaters now support it’s return to this land. Shameful but hardly surprising.
It is really nice to see a statistical report where the methods are as clear as this… however, I would have liked a list of the specific questions asked. This is important because the question “do you think Gardaí should have to release dangerous gangland criminals if they can’t charge them immediately?” is likely to get a different answer than the question “do you believe Gardaí should have the power to hold individuals without trial if it is decided that the crime is serious enough?”.
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