Gun crime in the Republic has plummeted, despite the drug trade proving resilient through the pandemic years, with fewer than one person per month now being treated in hospitals for gun attack injuries compared to about 60 per year previously.
The number of people being murdered in gun attacks has also plummeted, with five such killings last year compared to more than 20 per year in the recent past. Cases of illegal discharge of firearms have fallen by almost 80 per cent from their peak and illegal possession of firearms was down by just over 60 per cent.
Former Garda assistant commissioner John O’Driscoll, who managed the specialist anti-gangland units in the force before his retirement last year, told The Irish Times pressure must now be kept on crime gangs to ensure gangland killings did not resume at the rate seen before.
Because lengthy surveillance-based Garda operations necessary to catch “hit squads” were expensive, significant resources must be put in place for the Garda. This would ensure some of the men jailed for Kinahan-Hutch feud crimes, and who were now being released, would not be permitted to re-establish themselves in the underworld.
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He said there had been a major effort to pursue high-value targets in the period after the Regency Hotel attack, linked to the Kinahan-Hutch feud, in February 2016. Men who “killed for financial reward” were identified and operations were put in place to catch them.
“I have always said there was a limited number of these people who will kill for reward and a number of operations in particular saw hit squads being caught as they were going to try and murder someone,” he said, adding the jailing of high-value targets had clearly helped reduced serious gun crime.
Figures obtained by The Irish Times from the Health Service Executive show in 2021 a total of 10 “gun assault” victims were treated for injuries in hospitals in the Republic. That compared with a peak of 59 in 2005 and 25 as recently as 2019.
Last year, there were five gangland gun murders in the Republic and two in 2021. This compares to 21 such killings in 2016. The number of gangland fatal shootings also exceeded 20 cases per year at times during the Celtic Tiger period when gun crime soared, especially in 2007 and 2008.
In 2007, some 331 cases of illegal discharge of a firearm were recorded, the peak of the modern era. That had fallen to 74 cases by 2021 and 59 such incidents were recorded in the first nine months of last year. In 2018, there were 452 cases of illegal possession of a firearm but by 2021 that had fallen to 171 cases. In the first nine months of last year there were 144 cases.
