Dublin’s archbishop calls for solidarity against violence

The Archbishop of Dublin has called on the people of the city to form a “strong alliance” against gangland violence and to co-operate with the Gardaí to “break the chain of hate and evil”.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin was speaking in the wake of the separate shooting of two men in Dublin on Monday night, in what appears to be the latest murders in a gangland feud that has already cost five lives since last September.

The archbishop said the elderly live in fear and children are being “exposed to carnage on their streets”. “We need to form a strong alliance of all those who oppose violence on our streets,” he said. “We cannot abandon the good honest men, women and children of parts of our inner city” who are “held to ransom by despicable people involved in the rackets of death”.

Strong alliance

He said Dublin needs to form a “courageous coalition of strong people” and show the promoters of violence that “together we are stronger than them and that we can bring them down”.

He said everyone has a responsibility to break the silence around the murders and “create a culture which will enable those who have information to get that information to the Gardaí”.