“Our cities and towns are under siege from a lunatic cohort of knife wielding thugs.” Ken O’Flynn

‘Time to bring an end to the ‘cuddle a thug’ policies.

Independent Ireland TD for Cork North-Central and party spokesperson on Urban Affairs Ken O’Flynn has described the latest knife attack in Dublin’s Henry Street as further confirmation that the city centre “continues to be engulfed in a prolonged atmosphere of reckless disregard for public safety.”

Deputy O’Flynn also went on to say that it was now beyond time for penal reform NGO’s and some opposition party’s to abandon their “cuddle a thug” policies; policies he claimed were contributing to a sense among perpetrators of violent crimes that they would be very unlikely to see the inside of a jail cell irrespective of the harm and fear they cause:

“People are absolutely sick to death of the wanton criminality that is now rampant, especially in our major cities and urban centres. They see a high trust culture that has been utterly degraded by a mass of moronic anti-social gangs and dangerous individuals, and they want an end to it, full stop.” said Deputy O’Flynn.

“Rural communities for whom this type of violence was exceptional are now becoming all too familiar with it. They are seeing up close and personal what happens when you have Governments that are unable or unwilling to get a firm grip on crime and a cohort of ministers who still parrot to their faces the blatant untruth that Dublin is safe.”

“Only today a young man in his 20’s was hospitalised in Cork after being brutally stabbed, while last week I highlighted the case of a man wielding a large knife who violently pursued another man in broad daylight in Grand Parade. His behaviour was described as ‘berserk’ by frightened witnesses.”

Also addressing the issue was Independent Ireland Councillor for Clondalkin Linda de Courcy:

“If you ask the Government what steps it has taken to tackle this issue, they will say things like the maximum penalty for the offences of possession of a knife with the intention of intimidating or injuring another person has increased from 5 years to 7 years imprisonment. But if you ask a garda they will say the law is not worth the paper it is written on because of a lack of patrol numbers and low levels of enforcement,” said Cllr de Courcy.

“Our communities and our cities are being held hostage by this kind of malignant and menacing behaviour. That is the plain reality that any minister could see if they simply stepped outside the bubble into the real world for just a moment.”

“The scales of justice must fall on the side of ordinary law-abiding people who just want to go about their daily lives without living in fear that someone they love or even they themselves will not fall victim to these senseless acts of brutality.

Right now, criminals effectively hold the balance of power in far too many areas and victims are an afterthought. That is a travesty that must be reversed,” concluded Cllr de Courcy.