Shane Geoghegan's murder marks yet another low point for Limerick, but will the outrage be backed up by action, asks Conor Lally, Crime Correspondent
IN A BACK room of St Joseph's Church on Limerick's O'Connell Street on Wednesday you could hear and see Shane Geoghegan's funeral. An audio link had been set up so journalists wouldn't have to go inside the church and take out their notebooks to scribble down the priest's remarks.
Live pictures were broadcast onto a small TV screen so reporters could also see the Mass. The priests had effectively set up a press room.
It meant the media could go about its business without intruding too much into the grief of those who had come to say goodbye to the popular 28-year-old.
It was a thoughtful and respectful gesture to the family, but it reminded you that Limerick is accustomed to gun-related funerals. Shane Geoghegan is the 14th person to die violently at the hands of Limerick's feuding gangs since 2000.
The killing spree began with the murder of Eddie Ryan snr on November 12th, 2000, eight years to the day before Shane Geoghegan was buried.
Every time another gun murder occurs, Limerick gets a pasting in the newspapers and on the airwaves. The government of the day promises action. Then the story moves somewhere else. Some time later, the next unfortunate is gunned down in Limerick and the cycle starts again.
Shane Geoghegan was shot in the head because he resembled a drug dealer the gunman was sent to murder. Shane was a fitter and a popular member of Limerick's Garryowen rugby club, where he captained the thirds team.
Witnessing the raw grief of the Geoghegan family and their friends as Shane's coffin - draped in the sky-blue and white of Garryowen - was put into the back of a hearse to be taken for burial, there was hope his killing might change things.
But no new ideas seem to have emerged from the ensuing political debate.
It was several hours after his murder in the Kilteragh estate in Dooradoyle before the media learned this was an innocent young man. Once news broke that he had been a victim of mistaken identity, the mood changed. Gangland criminals killing each other has almost come to be accepted, but when an innocent man is killed, public repulsion comes to the fore.
THE EXTENT OF the problem facing gardaí in Limerick city is laid bare in the gun-crime statistics. In 2005, there were 20 gun seizures in Limerick. In 2006, this figure jumped to 76. In 2007 it was 70. Up to November 6th of this year, 50 guns had been seized.
Nationwide there were 327 incidents of firearms being discharged last year. Some 99 of these took place in Limerick. That means a county with just 4 per cent of the State's population witnessed 30 per cent of these incidents.
The gun-crime statistics beg two questions. Firstly, has the Government given the Garda enough resources to tackle the runaway levels of gun crime in the city? Secondly, are Limerick gardaí effectively using the resources at their disposal?
The Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, this week made much of the fact that the Garda force is well-resourced. He mentioned that, despite worsening economic conditions, next year's Operation Anvil budget - which tackles gangland crime - has been increased by €1 million, bringing it up to €21 million. He quoted figures to support his contention that the gardaí in Limerick have been particularly well resourced. Garda numbers in the city increased 11 per cent this year to bring the force up to 625 members, making it bigger now than at any time in its history.
Limerick's new Regional Support Units and the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) profilers were also thrown into the mix to back up the Minister's case.
Beneath those statistics, however, lie some uncomfortable truths.
While the budget for Operation Anvil has indeed been increased by €1 million, the overall budget for Garda overtime has been reduced by €28 million next year, bringing it down to €80 million. The Limerick division will have to absorb its share of the overtime loss next year.
While the number of gardaí in Limerick has increased by 62, this is well short of the minimum 100 personnel that were recommended "immediately" some 19 months ago in a report for Government by John Fitzgerald, the former Dublin city manager.
While Limerick has been given one of only two new armed Regional Support Units in the State, the unit consists of just two cars, with a maximum of three gardaí in each at any one time. It's hardly an army.
Similarly, while much has been made of Cab's regional profilers going in to target assets in Limerick, there are only two of them in the city.
Against the backdrop of so much extreme gun violence in Limerick, which has the highest body count of any Irish gangland dispute, the recent increases in Garda resources seem risible.
So what are Limerick gardaí doing with the resources they have? Dermot Ahern and the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, this week gave gardaí in Limerick their full backing. Ahern said the record of Limerick gardaí in fighting organised crime is "second to none". Is this really true?
GARDA SOURCES SAY the main feud in Limerick involves between 85 and 100 gang members. Much of the media's attention this week has focused on the McCarthy-Dundon gang, as two of the Dundons made the news. Ger Dundon (21) - who says there is a €1 million contract on his head "because of who his family are" - presented himself to the courts to serve a 10-month sentence for 34 motoring offences and is now in jail. A bench warrant was issued for the arrest of his brother, 28-year-old John Dundon, who is wanted for public order offences.
Wayne Dundon (29) is currently serving seven years for threatening to kill Limerick bar man Ryan Lee, who refused to serve his 14-year-old sister.
Five other members of the Dundon-McCarthy gang are serving life for the 2003 murder of rival gang boss Kieran Keane. Two members are serving life for the murder of Limerick nightclub security man Brian Fitzgerald, and two more are in jail for gun-crime offences indirectly linked to the same killing.
Another two men are serving jail terms for trying to procure weapons for the McCarthy-Dundons, including rocket launchers, semi-automatic rifles, sub-machine guns and semi-automatic pistols.
ON THE OPPOSITE side of the feud, in the Keane-Collopy camp, many leading figures of that gang have also been taken out of circulation. Its one-time leader Kieran Keane is dead. His brother Christy (47) is serving 10 years for drugs offences. Kieran Keane's son Joseph (19) is serving six years for manslaughter. Christy Keane's son Liam (23) this year pleaded guilty to firearms offences, as did his co-accused.
In total, more than 40 criminals linked with the feuding gangs are currently in prison. Last year, in a period that saw 99 gun fire incidents, some 41 people were prosecuted for firearms offences at Limerick's Circuit Criminal Court. Following those convictions, gun crime in Limerick this year is down 64 per cent compared with the same period last year.
Some €3.5 million worth of drugs has been seized this year, up 23 per cent on the same period last year. In 2001 the number of criminal proceedings involving drug dealers in Limerick reached 56 cases. By last year that had climbed to 194 cases and will exceed 250 this year.
Gardaí have clearly enjoyed considerable success fighting gangland crime in Limerick. The problem is that there seems to be a conveyor belt of criminals from the sprawling, neglected estates of Limerick so that every time they take one gang member off the streets another takes his place. And it is back to these estates that the debate always returns.
About 41 per cent of all housing in Limerick city is local authority. This is the highest in the country by far and almost twice as high as Dublin, with 21 per cent. The unemployment rate in the city, according to the 2006 census, was the highest in the Republic at 14.6 per cent. The estates are among the biggest in Ireland, with more than 1,000 dwellings in many of them. It is a planner's dream gone badly wrong.
Some of these estates are wastelands. Rubbish has been tipped everywhere. Houses - in some parts rows of houses - are burnt out and boarded up.
Some would point to the boarded up houses as proof that people are being relocated ahead of the planned regeneration project. But these estates have been in a similar condition since at least 2003, when this reporter began making his by now regular trips to Limerick.
The Mayor of Limerick, Cllr John Gilligan speaks for many when he says considerably more gardaí are needed in the city. He acknowledges there have been recent increases in personnel but points out that this has followed decades of chronic under-resourcing.
"They play the same tune over again," he says of the Government's promises. "We need a dedicated Garda force specifically tasked with tackling organised crime in Limerick. They've ignored us."
He believes undercover gardaí should be planted all over the city to frustrate the gangs when they move drugs and guns around. Senior gardaí say it would take about 10 people to maintain a two-man surveillance presence to watch one individual on a 24-hour basis.
"Do the sums, we just haven't got the bodies," says one officer.
John Gilligan lives in the Lee Estate and used to live in Southill. He says those estates used to work well, with residents associations of more than 1,000 members in some. But then, in the 1980s, residents were offered £5,000 by the council towards the purchase of a private house if they agreed to surrender their local-authority houses. It meant most residents with ambition left.
"After the buy-out the entire thing fell apart," Gilligan says. "Anybody who was working took off. The next wave were people who were unemployed."
Then some of the crime families that are now to the fore began taking over some of the estates. They wanted whole rows of houses cleared so they could move in their extended families. Residents were offered money to move and some took it. Others refused the gangs' buy-out offers and were burnt out.
Cllr Lilly Wallace, who represents Southill and O'Malley Park, says things got so bad that people sold their house keys to the gangs and moved on.
"People were so anxious to get out when things went downhill they gave them the keys for a pittance just to get money to get started somewhere else," she says.
"The gangs moved in more and more of their own people and they took over estates. They told the good residents in the estates that they were going to do that and they have succeeded in certain areas."
She believes greed rather than poverty and lack of opportunity and education is at the centre of the feud. "We all came from big families," she says of her generation in Limerick.
"We all left school at 14 but we didn't go into crime. It's money. I believe 100 per cent that it's money. They're greedy and they can get it easy through the drugs."