Mayo Letter of the Week: Drug debt intimidation attacks merit tougher prison sentences

Sir,

THE whole country knows about the awful attack in Waterford when four innocent people were killed and two more seriously injured.

The reason for the attack, we are told, was to intimidate relatives into paying up for drug-incurred debt by others, usually close family members.

I wonder how many of us read of another fire-bomb attack in Kerry a few days later?

There have been major articles in the national papers which highlighted the effects of drug imtimidation on a number of families, which brings me to a recent court case when a criminal who came to Mayo was charged with attacking several homes in an effort to force families into making payment to drug dealers.

We can only imagine the terror that these attacks bring to the families involved.

The learned barrister did his best to mitigate his client's behaviour by telling the judge that what happened was not as serious as what happened in Waterford, that the defendant came from a good family, and that he missed the birth of his child because he was in jail – as if that was anybody's fault except his own.

The accused had 16 previous convictions, for what we do not know, and the judge gave him a good talking to before sentencing him to two-and-a-half years.

After automatic remission, that means he will serve a maximum of 22.5 months.

We are not told if this sentence is consecutive to any other sentence or if it is concurrent with another sentence.

Does anyone, including the learned judge, believe that this very lenient sentence will be a deterrent to those out there who carry out these drug-related attacks every day of the week?

I certainly do not.

If we, as a society, do not sit up and demand of our state that any future attacks of this nature should be treated far more seriously, then they will continue – and who knows at what door they will arrive next and how many Waterfords there might be.

There is little that can be done now about the case in your paper, but I hope that if any number of the judiciary reads this, it may prompt them to be a bit less lenient with the convicted thugs in future cases.

Yours sincerely,

CONCERNED

(In view of the subject matter of this letter, that is the only way I can sign myself.)

- Name and address with editor.