"People have a right to live their lives"

"The four men bought nylon stockings which they used as masks and went to the home of four elderly brothers. When two of the brothers resisted, one of them (aged 79) was beaten to death. The other died about three weeks later."

"The 83 year old woman was bound hand and foot to a chair and beaten. A nylon stocking was tied tightly round her neck and she almost choked. She later managed, still tied to the chair, to make her way to a neighbour's house. She died three months later."

"The locks were forced open and the elderly woman was threatened with rape. She handed over Pounds 12 in cash but was then gagged and blindfolded while the gang of our demanded to know the whereabouts of other elderly people in the district. They refused to let her put her coat and shoes on . . . They forced her into the boot of the car band drove for 17 miles after which they locked her into a county council hut".

Is there a "new" level of savagery in recent crimes against the elderly? Torrents of callers to the talk shows this week clearly think so and the cases quoted above might appear to confirm it - except that the first two of these assaults took place 15 years ago; the third in 1985.

Sadistic crimes against the rural elderly are nothing new in 1984, they reached an all time high of 432. Nor is the notion of "highly mobile" criminal gangs taking day trips from Dublin to the rural west and south they, too, were a feature of the 1980s.

As for police detection rates, it took six years for two of these cases to make their way to the courts. The fact that there have been similar spates of crime before, however, is cold comfort to the old, the vulnerable and the isolated. They are left to contemplate nearly 50 attacks on the rural elderly (including two murders) across the south and the west, compounded by the murder of two women and the disappearance of a third within a 35 mile radius in the east - all in the space of a few months.

For many urban dwellers, the pathetic details that have emerged following these attacks have come as a shock. Patrick Gardiner, of Woodford, Co Galway kept a pitchfork in his bedroom but was no match for the two young raiders who broke into his house on a Sunday evening before Christmas.

"They fleeced me around the head. They kept beating me, looking for money. The beating continued after they put a plastic bag over my head and tightened a rope around my neck. They lit a Christmas candle and heated a poker before burning my eyebrows."

Unable to free himself until a neighbour called many hours later, he believed he was dying: "I could feel myself fading away but I kept praying, praying . . . And God was with me."

IN another incident where the three intruders included a woman, an elderly man was raped as well as brutally beaten. This week, the terrible spate of assaults culminated in the death of Tommy Casey (68), a harmless, recluse from Oranmore, Co Galway, who used an oil lamp for light and a wheelbarrow to carry home his meagre shopping. He had been bludgeoned savagely on the back of the head and face, suffered three broken ribs and had then been tied up with strong rope wrapped tightly around his shins, run between his thighs and wound around his wrists, pinioning them behind his back. He choked to death, pitched on his face in front of the old Stanley range.

Rural organisations such as Muintir na Tire, the ICMSA, the IFA and the ICA have all used strong language about the heightened fears of both old and young in recent weeks. But those organisations are equally aware that for many old people, a gnawing sense of terror has become almost routine over the past 10 years or so.

According to the voluntary organisation, Age Action Ireland, 10 per cent of the rural elderly lived alone in 1961; in 1991, that figure had risen to 24 per cent. It is estimated that there are around 100,000 people over 65 currently living alone in rural areas.

Some nap fitfully during the day and lie awake all night; some are locking themselves in even by day; many barricade themselves in by pushing heavy furniture against the doors as well as bolting themselves into their bedrooms. Some who own legally held shotguns keep them fully loaded by the bedside in case of a break in.

Though the potential for tragic accidents is obvious, an increasing number of people back this option: "People have a right to live their lives: They shouldn't have to put up with this. What law and order can you expect when the law says that if you break into my house and are injured, you can sue? Well I don't care, I'd rather be prosecuted than be murdered - I'd rather be in jail than the graveyard."

The calls for more policing, more prisons, "savage sentences for savage crimes" as well as the birch and public humiliation for criminals have been growing louder and more insistent. No matter that the Minister exhibits enviable confidence in Garda resources and reconstruction, a strong perception remains that the nature of policing has changed to the certain detriment of rural communities.

The application of new technology - such as the Green Man - means that gardai are no longer regarded as the omniscient peacekeepers of old. Far from it. Over and over, rural dwellers are heard to remark that the only time one is likely to encounter a garda now is during law enforcement exercises such as the Christmas drink driving blitz or at motor tax checkpoints.

JAMES Reddiough of Age Action points out that according to one survey of developed countries, Ireland has the fourth lowest ratio of police to population: "Another figure suggests that there were 11,400 police based in rural areas in the mid 1980s but that now there are just 10,800."

A survey of policing carried out by the ICA has also revealed deep concern about the level of police cover and a lack of response when incidents occurred: "Even then we were told that Garda stations had not been closed," says Bridin Twist. "Well maybe they hadn't been closed but what they were doing was keeping them open for a couple of hours with a guard moving from one to another. In one area of Galway, when a guard was called, it was two hoors before he came to the scene".

This week, people looking for answers to society's ills grasped at straws - foreigners, travellers, drugs, land wars, the bail laws, so called temporary release programmes, prisons with revolving doors - some or none of which may be responsible.

But Gearoid O Riain, a member, of Pavee Point, a travellers organisation, protests wearily that travellers, too, are "totally disgusted" by these murders. "If a connection is made between travellers and these crimes, we would be totally supportive of them being brought to justice." The problem, he says, is that all travellers are being smeared by innuendo.

"Travellers are living in the same fear as everyone else but they have the additional fear that they could be the victims of some retribution. People working with travellers have been getting threatening phone calls in recent weeks. One was threatened with knee capping."

But even the most strident flog em and lock 'em up for ever advocates must pause to consider that birching or 1,000 man prisons alone will never solve the problem. "The best crime prevention programme is good neighbours", says Jim Quigley, the president of Muintir na Tire, in what sounds like a tired old cliche.

In fact, he has figures to back that assertion. Community Alert - a rural Neighbourhood Watch - was launched by Muintir na Tire 10 years ago in response to the last spate of crimes against the rural elderly. A recent survey carried out in conjunction with gardai in three different Garda divisions showed that those areas operating Community Alert had shown a 17 per cent drop in attacks on the elderly, a 25 fall in burglaries and a 21 per cent drop in other crimes.

After 10 years of limited support from the Department of Health, with the PMPA sponsoring promotional material, the Department of Justice has finally recognised its contribution with Pounds 50,000 in funding.

Meanwhile, says Jim Quigley, though community workers and volunteers from St Catherine's in the Liberties and places all over the State are "crying out" for community centres in the continuing struggle to keep young people active and occupied "to stop the young petty criminal becoming the violent criminal of tomorrow" - 51 per cent of National Lottery money is still going to fund day to day spending in Government departments, a purpose for which it was never intended.

"They're all voluntary workers. They need the support. How else are we to take young people out of that syndrome?" Good neighbourliness, vigilance and a concerted effort to divert young people from a path of crime? They may not be the simple, quick fix solutions we crave, but just now they look like the best shot we have.