Outstanding bravery in the face of neglect by the State
IF YOU really want to know what lawlessness looks like then watch the horrifying television interview given by Quinn Industrial Holdings executive Kevin Lunney to the BBC Spotlight programme, broadcast on Monday night last. If you’ve any interest at all in learning about the true, unvarnished brutality of terrorism that has been allowed to grow by police forces – gardaí and the PSNI – on both sides of the border, then listen to the full details of what Mr Lunney was forced to endure at the hands of dedicated criminals and callous torturers.
And then, after all that, the burning question has to be – what has gone so wrong with our political elites and our police that such an atrocity could even be contemplated, let alone executed in such a cold-blooded and inhuman manner?
The modern democratic state is based on the social contract – people voluntarily hand over to that state their individual natural rights, including the right to protect themselves and in certain circumstances to exact retribution on those who attack them.
In return, the State commits to secure our freedoms and when those are violated the police step in and bring the culprits to justice – and to punishment. Despite all the bluster, the pretence and the expressions of confidence in the rule of law from the government and from the gardaí, one thing is absolutely certain – the social contract with QIH executives has been repudiated by the State.
Despite repeated appeals for help and numerous attacks and threats, nothing tangible was done by either the gardaí or the PSNI.
The extraordinary courage of the
QIH executives stands in sharp contrast to the shameful neglect they have been subjected to.
They have been hung out to dry. In a truly shocking interview with this newspaper last Sunday, QIH director John McCartin couldn’t have been more clear.
He accused the gardaí and the Government of ignoring the litany of intimidation, arson and assaults they have suffered for almost five years.
On television this week, Mr McCartin repeated how he had personally identified to gardaí the names of people who delivered the most chilling threats against him and his fellow directors – and how none of those people have even been questioned by the gardaí up to now.
Terrorism and criminality are merely bullying writ large. And we all know that bullying can only be stopped when it’s confronted.
Until the outrageous, nearfatal attack on Mr Lunney, there was no such effective challenge to the bullying of QIH executives. It can come as no surprise to anybody that matters have escalated to the point where lives are now on the line.
There is a dark corruption at the heart of the modern Irish state – a tough, amoral, unbending indifference to the suffering of regular people.
It revealed itself 35 years ago in the Kerry Babies Case when an innocent family was sacrificed in order to protect the system and the careers that fed off it.
The mask has slipped several times since then. The State was a reluctant recruit to the campaign to hold clerical child rapists and abusers to account and it denied, delayed and defended the indefensible in the hepatitis C scandal and hounded Mrs Bridget McCole as she went to an early grave.
We’ve had numerous other examples of corruption and unadmitted failures, time and time again – right up to the current CervicalCheck catastrophe which has killed more than 200 women. And still the State resists, forcing terminally ill women to fight for their rights in tooth-and-claw legal battles in open court.
Kevin Lunney, his wife and children, the other QIH executives and the vast majority of law-abiding people on both sides of the border are the latest victims of a State that has lost its way.
And when the State gets caught out, it resets – and then some action. But, it’s always too little and way too late.