Have we forsaken the folk of rural Ireland?
A pensioner f lees his home at night. Garda stations are closed, communities live in fear. Is this the best we can offer those who choose to live like their fathers did?
MICHAEL McMAHON’S rheumy, faded-blue eyes moved slowly past each word. In a dark room lit only by candlelight, he read through the sports section of the newspaper, engrossed in the latest match analysis on the GAA pages.
Having lived all his life without electricity, he had become skilled at reading i n poor l i ght. From time to time he would hear a noise, but would carry on reading. Experience over the years had taught him that the many harmless sounds of the wilderness that surrounded him were just that.
In the background, a small battery operated radio played music, and a turf-stacked fire bellowed heat into the freezing air.
Outside, vast empty blackness stretched out for miles. There were no street lamps or passing cars, no neighbours or distant signs of life, only acres and acres of nothing.
‘That’s the way he had lived all his life,’ said Father Patrick Carmody, who has known Michael McMahon for more than 20 years.
‘And he was entitled to live as he pleased. He had no electricity and no running water. He lived by candlelight and heat from the fire and when I would call round with the newspaper he would sit and read alone.
‘He had his own way of doing things. He was set in his ways.’
The story of Mr McMahon and the terror he faced in his isolated rural home in Co. Clare hit the headlines this week, causing widespread shock and revulsion.
Two years ago, on a cold night in February, three young men smashed in three of his windows and demanded money. The terrified pensioner gave them everything he had.
He kept his money in glass jars, which he handed out to them. The three jars contained roughly €4,000 in cash. After they left, Mr McMahon tried to board up his windows with blocks and bits of turf. Four nights later, the gang was back.
This time they pretended to have a gun and threatened to shoot him.
Mr McMahon opened the door and let the men into his house. He handed over €3,000 that he had just withdrawn from the bank. One of the gang located his bank books and saw that he had €50,000 left in his savings account.
The money was an inheritance he had received from a relative in America.
The men told the elderly farmer to withdraw the cash on Monday and they’d be back to collect it. They warned that if he contacted the police, they would come back and burn his house down.
This helpless man, alone in the middle of the night, having been terrorised twice, saw only one option − to flee his home, never to return.
He packed up a few meagre possessions, climbed on to his bicycle and cycled for 30 miles. The j ourney took him eight hours.
His destination was the safe haven of St Joseph’s Nursing Home in Ennis.
Three men have pleaded guilty to robbing Mr McMahon. All three are due to be sentenced in March.
It’s now two years on and Mr McMahon, a fit and healthy man, is still living in a nursing home.
This week, at his house in Cree in a remote part of west Clare, there is still evidence of the two nights of terror the 68-year- old farmer endured.
The road leading to the small cottage in which he was born is narrow, flanked by ditches on both sides. There are no houses or buildings to see on the way, only woodland in the distance and acres of fields.
The window at the front door of the modest home remains boarded up and the tiny blue gate that f l anks the entrance path is locked.
A page from an old newspaper covers the only window still intact and the garden has become wild and overgrown. There are two other cottages adjacent, both boarded up and abandoned.
The journey back along the lonely lane that leads to the McMahon home opens up onto a main road. To the left, it leads to Doonbeg, home of a fabulous five- star golf-resort graced by the rich and famous.
TO the right, it leads to the small village of Corraclare, where Michael McMahon would often be spotted cycling to pick up bread and milk. The pothole-riddled road is home to a small number of rural dwellings that house the closest t hing to ‘ neighbours’ t hat Michael McMahon had.
On Wednesday morning, one of them, an elderly gentleman who asked to go by the name Thomas, emerged from his small bungalow. Dressed in a tweed jacket and matching cap, the 75-year- old explained that he himself had his house burgled just two weeks ago. He did not want to use his own name for fear of a reprisal.
‘They stole my money,’ he says. ‘Cash I had kept in the house. They must have been watching me. I wasn’t in at the time and they broke my front door.
‘I’m not frightened, just more annoyed about it. It was a lot of money to me. The guards came out but sure what can they do.’
Thomas, like many of Ireland’s elderly rural dwellers, explained that his life is a simple one. A lifelong bachelor, he lives alone and has a limited social circle.
During the day he farms the land but, he says, the recent spell of bad weather has significantly damaged his livelihood. At night he enjoys settling down to watch Vincent Browne and sipping a can of Guinness. ‘This is my home,’ he says. ‘I see it on the news about Dublin and all the shootings and
stabbings with the young ones. They don’t value life anymore. Here it’s not as bad. I would rather be here. What happened to Michael happened a long time ago and it is still happening.’
Further along the road, Mary and Paddy Carty are busy tending to the land around their home. A farmer himself, Paddy laments on Michael McMahon’s departure.
‘I haven’t seen Michael since he left,’ he says. ‘It is an awful thing to have happened. But no one around here knew about it until he was robbed the second time.
‘He is a gentleman. You would always see him out on his bike cycling into the village, especially around election time. He was always welldressed, very smart. And he would start cutting turf in March and do that for months until he had the place stocked for the winter.
‘And he never took a penny off the State.’
Unlike some of their other neighbours in the area, the couple feel safe in their home, but believe that rural areas are often forgotten in terms of the wider national interest. Mary and Paddy are active in the community and enjoy set- dancing at the nearby pub where other locals, many of whom are elderly, congregate in the long Winter evenings.
The closest village is Cooraclare. There, locals gathered outside the petrol station shared their theories on rural Ireland.
MANY believe it is the lack of back-up support in country areas, where small numbers of gardaí are on duty and fewer squad cars are available, both of which are prompting a rural crime wave.
‘In my day you would have never tried it,’ said one man.
‘The guards were everywhere. You would have had the fear of God in you when it came to the law. The local sergeant would have known you and your parents and everyone connected to you and he would have known what was what. Now we have thugs patrolling the countryside staking out houses and terrorising old people. They don’t have any respect and they fear no one. It has to stop.’
As with many rural communities around Ireland, isolation means certain places are as vulnerable as ever and many people living in the area close to Michael McMahon’s home are feeling more and more abandoned.
‘The politicians probably have no idea that there are people living in the type of seclusion some people around here are,’ says one man.
‘They are badly out of touch with reality and they are abandoning the very people who make this country what it is. And while they forget about us they are eroding the whole fabric of the village community.’
The issue of Garda station closures is one that divides opinion. Some say there has been in increase in petty crime in the area as a result of cutbacks, the worst of these crimes being home invasions of elderly people. The loss of Doonbeg station, which closed last year, has left many elderly dwellers nervous about their safety.
‘When I was broken into I had to call 999,’ says Thomas.
‘I only ever knew the number for the station in Doonbeg. Now there is only the one in Kilrush and I don’t know the number. It’s the closest station now.’
Not everyone agrees that a reduced Garda presence is to blame. Indeed, 83-year-old Father Carmody believes the root of the problem is a lack of stimulation for young people.
‘I don’t think more gardaí going around will stop it,’ he says.
‘I have been going over this in my mind and I have come to the conclusion that what is important is work and training for young people. If they get work they get good pay. These young people have nothing to do and they are turning to crime.
‘You often see three or four lads on the street, doing nothing. You need money, you need work. You need to be satisfied in yourself. They are getting up in the morning with nothing to do and that is a big problem. I’m 21 years here and they are very good people. Burglaries aren’t prolific.
‘I said to Michael, “Why didn’t you come to me?” and I said, “Why didn’t you go to Kilrush?” It was only three miles and there is a Garda station there.’
Whatever Michael McMahon’s reasons for not initially contacting the gardaí, he felt that the threat he encountered in his home was one he could no longer face. On the night he left, rather than taking the main road to Ennis, he cycled along a road known as ‘the Mountain road’, a lonely journey that provokes horror among locals.
‘It’s a terrible indictment of our society,’ says local councillor Bill Chambers. ‘For a man like that to have had the fear of God put into him and to be driven out of his home in the middle of the night, it’s a disgrace. He led a simple life and never bothered anyone. His was a way of life in rural Ireland that we should be preserving and he has been forced out.
‘It makes people very sad. Unless there is a complete nationwide rethink about how we deal with rural Ireland, it will become decimated. Rural Ireland is forgotten. I have always said it was a retrograde step to close Garda stations and the closure of schools and post offices is further isolating people. The elderly in these areas are being abandoned.’
ON Thursday morning, Michael McMahon’s neighbour Thomas was going about his daily chores of setting fires and tending to cattle. He was standing in the rain outside his home, wellington boots thick with mud. ‘Is Michael doing OK?,’ he asks. ‘I haven’t seen him since he left. I was wondering if he is OK where he is. I don’t think he is coming back.’
The answer to the question lies with Fr Carmody, who sees Mr McMahon on a regular basis in the nursing home in which he resides in Ennis. ‘He is perfect now,’ he says. ‘He is very happy. He has his room and a big television at the end of the bed and an en suite. He is being treated very well. I don’t think he will back. There was a house coming up in the village and myself and a councillor were thinking it would be good in the long run for Michael. I told him there was a house here and he decided to stay in the Home. I wouldn’t blame him. I don’t think he wants to be back on his own again.’
Michael McMahon had lived in his cottage since his birth. He shared his home with his parents until they passed away. For years he had resisted attempts to modernise it with running water and electricity. According to those who knew him he was ‘happy in his own company’.
Poignantly, in his absence, the land around his former home has stepped in to ward off intruders. Dense brambles have grown wild over the side gate and surrounded the house, making any attempt to gain entry a treacherous gamble.
Marooned from the surrounding land by the prickly grip of nature overgrown, the tiny whitewashed cottage life now stands alone − an empty shell where a quiet, elderly man once lived in peace.