Taoiseach blames killings on 'gangsters and thugs'

The Taoiseach strongly criticised criminal elements involved in violence in west Dublin and other urban communities

While defending the Government's commitment to dealing with social deprivation, Mr Ahern referred to "gangsters, thugs and criminals" who were involved in activities to make money to buy properties in Spain.

"How in the name of God can a garda with a pencil and a book deal with these people?" he asked.

Mr Ahern was replying to Mr Joe Higgins (Socialist Party, Dublin West) who asked him to explain "why in the Ireland of 2004, in which you and your Government have had a considerable influence in shaping, a cohort of young men are so brutalised, so twisted and damaged mentally, that they will savagely murder a rival gang member while his child and partner sleep beside him and under the roof of his mother, as happened this week in the west side of Dublin?"

Mr Higgins added: "Why will they savagely slaughter a totally innocent man, a father of two, as he flees from them, as happened two weeks ago?

"Why will they leave a 74-years-old pensioner, from Donegal, in the revolting and appalling condition depicted in the Evening Herald of today?" He said that when members of gangs were brutally murdered, ordinary decent people, the backbone of the communities, felt so frustrated, angry and fearful, that their reaction was often that it was one less individual to terrorise the neighbourhood and pose a danger to themselves and their children.

Working-class neighbourhoods were still criminally neglected, said Mr Higgins, even if they were in the shadow of opulent new apartment blocks and the glass towers of major corporations.

Life for many good people - the big majority in those neighbourhoods - was fraught with tension and insecurity, he added.

Mr Higgins said the Government had failed to engage with a small minority of young people, who were clearly, from an early point, seriously dysfunctional and a serious menace to their communities.

Mr Higgins said the Government had failed to provide sufficient resources. "What genius in the Department of Justice thought that the people of west Dublin would believe it a solution to throw up a few Garda checkpoints in their estates and have gardaí walking through the estates with horses? What these communities in west Dublin and elsewhere demand are emergency resources in education, social and psychological services."

Listing a number of community-related schemes, Mr Ahern said that over €50 million had been allocated to disadvantaged education, and over €20 million towards a community development programme, this year.

These resources had been targeted at a small number of families in a small number of areas who . . . sometimes through no fault of their own, or through being influenced by others, required assistance, he said.

"In so many areas, people are working hard professionally, from clinical psychologists to teachers, to people working with those under stress and need," the Taoiseach said.