By Sarah Mac Donald - 27 April, 2016
“Dublin needs a courageous coalition of strong people who are not afraid to call violence what it is: evil,” Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said in a statement on Tuesday in response to the two killings in the capital on Monday night, one linked to a gangland feud.
The archbishop called for a “coalition of strong people” who “oppose violence on our streets” to come together to challenge the “despicable and evil” acts of those who sponsor such violence.
He warned that hatred and evil easily become a chain and those who resort to such violence feel that they are the strong ones.
“We cannot abandon the good honest men, women and children of parts of our inner city,” he implored as he warned that the elderly in the area are living in fear while their children are exposed to “carnage on their streets”.
“Their neighbourhood is being vilified; they are held to ransom by despicable people involved in the rackets of death,” Archbishop Martin hit out.
To the “promoters of violence” who think that they can impose their interests on society, the catholic leader said, “we have to show them that together we are stronger than them and that we can bring them down”.
Dr Martin stressed that that those who cultivate violence thrive on silence and that people must not close their eyes to what they know and he also appealed for some mechanism which would allow the substantial intelligence on the streets to be heard by the Gardaí.
He concluded by highlighting how once again families have lost loved ones. “Their tears and their loss will not be compensated for with more violence. We have to break the chain of hate and evil,” he said.
The archbishop’s strongly worded statement was issued in response to the news of the killing of dissident republican Michael Barr in the north inner city in the latest incident in the ongoing Kinahan-Hutch feud.
In Clondalkin on Monday night, 37-year-old Thomas Farnan was also shot dead. Gardaí said he was not a violent criminal or gangland figure.
