Over 1,500 people attended a public meeting in Thurles Co Tipperary last night to discuss crime in the county.
It came after the recent conviction of seven men from Dublin for the aggravated burglary on the home of a young Tipperary couple and their children highlighted the issue of rural crime.
Robert O’Shea of Save our Community said that people in rural Ireland are no longer prepared to tolerate such harassment intimidation and fear.
“We are sending a clear message to the Government and politicians that we the law abiding citizens of the country, the silent majority who have rarely complained and put up with our lot we have the basic right to feel safe in our own homes we have had enough,” he said.
Half the people attending the meeting said they had been a victim of crime and everyone said they knew someone who had been the victim of a crime.
Calls for tagging of criminals, reform of bail laws, more gardaí, and reform of free legal aid, at crime meeting. pic.twitter.com/aCC2ToUm0R
— Petula Martyn (@petulamartyn) October 8, 2015
One man said that in the last five years he had at least at 12 to 15 break-ins and damage done his premises and he said he was a mirror image for rural Ireland.
A woman who was broken into two years ago said she had not felt safe since.
“I checked and they had the whole place ransacked well I’m still scared, I park at the back door and I run in the back door if there is no one at home,” she said.
Another woman told the meeting that she was afraid living on her own and being robbed two years ago and she critised the Government.
She said she would like to write a letter to the Government which would read: "Dear Enda and Mrs Fitzgerald you have failed us.
"You have failed to take action, you have closed our rural garda stations because you have deemed them to be doing nothing.
"I never thought I’d be going to bed at night with a gun in one room and cartridges in the other," she said.
People expressed their anger at the lack of gardaí and what they described as the favorable treatment of criminals.
One man said "If these boyos hadn’t the amount of free legal aid - senior council, junior council, barristers, you name it they have it ...
"If they were paying for that out of their own pocket they might not be half as brave as they are today but everything is handed to them. The law is on their side,” he said.
