DONEGAL DAILY COMMENT: We write hundreds of stories every week at Donegal Daily. We rarely write an editorial comment.
But today it’s time to ask a simple question: How long is our Justice Minister going to allow thugs to terrorise the people of County Donegal?
Alan Shatter controls the purse strings, our courts and An Garda Siochana.
And we DON’T HAVE ENOUGH GARDAÍ to deal with the sickening crimes which has left people terrified in their homes right across this county in the past few weeks.
Like the weather affected by a so-called ‘Storm Factory’ in the Atlantic, Donegal is being bombard by a ‘Crime Factory’ – wave after wave of criminal attack on some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
Elderly widows have been shaken out of their beds by thugs smashing their doors down with sledgehammers.
Old men in the twilight of their lives have been bound, gagged and had knives put to their throats by lowlife criminals.
Some Gardaí have said they’re in control; it’s just the reporting of crime by journalists which makes it look bad. What utter rubbish. People don’t want to hear statistics when they’re dealing with an elderly relative left traumatised or worse – like poor Suzy Arthur who never recovered and eventually died.
But most Gardaí know what the real story is – there simply isn’t enough of them. They struggle from shift to shift (on barmy shift patterns) to get to grips with the criminals.
They know for a fact that their colleagues up in Dublin have all the resources they want; whilst our county struggles to cope.
Gardaí do their best. Some even work unpaid extra hours for the benefit of this community and we should be grateful for that.
But when they do catch criminals – and they do catch them – we often see them bailed, given Community Service Orders and fined – fines which they don’t even pay.
And what is the root cause of all of this; Alan Shatter, Minister for Justice.
It is he who isn’t giving Donegal the policing resources it needs.
And it is he who is telling judges to try to avoid filling up our prisons.
No amount of waffle will wash anymore after another senseless attack this weekend on a couple in Lifford.
No amount of rubbish about ‘specialist targeting’ of criminals counts.
We’ve had enough. Health Minister James Reilly gives Letterkenny General Hospital HALF the money per patient that Dublin hospitals get.
Alan Shatter is giving us half the number of Gardaí we need to fight this scourge of crime.
It’s time for our SIX TDs – all of them – to stand up for Donegal.
And demand that Alan Shatter either gives our Gardaí the resources they need or get the hell out of Government.
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