A Waterford-based sociologist has said he believes youth gangs in Ireland might in the future develop along the lines of criminal youth gangs in the United States.
Mr Shane Dunphy, a sociologist at the Waterford Institute of Technology, said that he had spoken to 10 groups in the south-east last summer whose members claimed to have formalised structures and initiation ceremonies. Some of them had claimed to have sexually molested female members.
However, Mr Dunphy told The Irish Times yesterday that the people he had spoken to might have "over-glamorised" or "over-exaggerated" what they did. Some of the groups had claimed to have guns, but he did not see any guns, although he had seen knives and other implements.
He initially spoke about his pilot study at the annual conference in Belfast last week of the Sociological Association of Ireland, and a weekend newspaper report, based on an interview with him, suggested that there was in Wexford an "American-style gang attacking refugees".
Mr Dunphy said yesterday that, for the purposes of his work, he had created a "hypothetical model" of how youth gangs might develop in the future from the 10 groups he spoke to in New Ross, Waterford, Wexford, Enniscorthy and Ballybeg. These were mostly involved in petty crime and burglary and were minority groups in their areas. "I am very anxious not to suggest this is a phenomenon of the south east," he said.
Various sociologists had found similar evidence of such groups in other areas, he claimed. "Most of them don't have a vendetta against refugees, but they formed in an informal way because they felt threatened by the arrival of refugees in the south east."
When more refugees arrived, they formalised their structures - "paramilitary is too strong a word for it" - but Mr Dunphy did not believe that these groups were now a threat to refugees. They were more interested in "surviving", in having an identity in socially-deprived areas.
The youth services were not aware of such activities, but he had spoken to some youth workers who had some knowledge of them.
Mr Dunphy said that this kind of activity might be a "flash in the pan", a "temporary phase of development" which would change into something else.
The Garda in the south east believed that if such activity was occurring it would have been brought to their attention, he said. But he felt that the groups would not want to reveal their structures.
Mr Dunphy conceded that he might now need to look at the model he had created in a "different way". The next part of his study would look at the involvement of female and younger members in these groups. He believed that the groups did have rights of initiation and he had seen one 14-year-old boy who had been beaten up, but he now accepted that this "might have been a set-up". He was satisfied, however, that at least one of the 10 groups he had spoken to last summer did molest female members who joined it.