Footnote to this morning’s presentation at #cmc16 Cleraun Media Conference in Dublin. Philip Gallagher @cleraunmedia took his audience through some of his investigative work on crime in rural Ireland. It is a real problem.
A story on one of Ireland’s newspapers earlier this year revealed something shocking about the Irish Republic’s crime scene.
An Independent.ie analysis of homicide rates over the last decade reveals that you are almost six times more likely to be shot and killed in the 26 counties as you are in England/Wales.
And, contrary to popular belief, the gun homicide rate in the Irish Republic was more than double that of Northern Ireland for the ten years from 2005 to 2015.
The per capita rate for Scotland was 0.064 per 100,000 per annum; Northern Ireland was 0.204; and England/Wales was 0.075. Incredibly the rate in the Republic at 0.437 (see above) was more than double that of the North and almost six times the English and Welsh figures.
Garvan Hill 
Michael,
Do you believe there is a link between this crime statistic and the increasing, nearly wholesale abandonment by the Irish people in the last 20-25 years of belief in a transcendent God?
I will just give a quote from Romano Guardini: “God and Christ are rejected. Where this will domminates and is realized, maqn closes himself against that abundance which comes from sacred blessing. Then, though prosperity may seem to bloom and ripen, in reality there is desert. The sun also rises; spring still comes; deeds are accomplished and children born, but everything is sealed in eternal sterility.” (The Lord)
Michael,
I am a middle-income, highly educated professional. The people I interact with care about house prices, career advancement, buy-to-let, the stock market, golf clubs, their children’s worldly achievements and, of course, restaurants, travel, wedding dresses, and shopping (consumerism). I have never heard the wholesale acceptance of the rapid destruction of our traditions, values, institutions, and its effect on our lives and the lives of future generations discussed in any Irish social setting, and this includes among priests, nuns, pastoral workers, and people who are happy to stand during a baptism and say they reject Satan and all his empty promises.
I’m interested in your views on the ground these days and your prognosis for Ireland’s future, since I rarely leave my house anymore except to work and go to the supermarket, having become a de facto hermit because I can find the things I care about discussed only online.