Gardaí beat the IRA, they can win here too
THE thugs-for-hire who kidnapped, tortured and maimed Kevin Lunney are so confident of their impunity that they threatened to kill a director of Quinn Industrial Holdings (QIH) last week. The untouchables’ message was a reiteration of their mission for nearly a decade now: unless Seán Quinn is reinstated to run QIH, murder threats, kidnapping, violence and intimidation will continue.
That message delivers a grim reality: this is all about money and status – who runs the territory and who collects the spoils. In other words: who dares wins.
Somebody is paying those gangsters.
And that reveals a terrible truth: the gangsters’ relentless campaign has convinced a majority of locals that they will prevail. Fewer inhabitants believe the gardaí and PSNI’s promises to bring them to justice.
Seán Quinn has said he no longer wants to run the company again – and has publicly asked for the violent campaign against QIH’s directors to end.
IN a statement on Thursday, he said: ‘I implore that whomever is carrying out these heinous acts to cease immediately. I call on those who have advanced threats to withdraw them immediately. If they feel that they are doing it in mine or my family’s name, they are badly mistaken.’
The chief executive of QIH, Liam McCaffrey, welcomed Mr Quinn’s ‘clear and concise remarks’ and said: ‘It’s not ambiguous. Previous statements from Mr Quinn had seen fit to berate the executives here which I thought was wrong, frankly.’ Another QIH director, John McCartin, reserved his judgement on Mr Quinn’s statement as his previous ones were defamatory and inflammatory. QIH’s directors and their families remain in mortal peril. And the morbid reality could that it will take a death for the authorities to do their duty and end the violence.
It took the murders of Veronica Guerin and Shane Geoghegan for the gardaí to take down the crimibe nal gangs responsible for their killings and end gangster-rule in Dublin and Limerick.
The gardaí and politicians have installed the latest security equipment around the QIH executives’ homes but Kevin Lunney was taken from his car to be tortured and maimed by his kidnappers.
Panic buttons and electronic devices are public relations gestures and no substitute for prosecuting and imprisoning the perpetrators and their enablers.
SUSPICIONS of the Irish criminal gangs’ reach made international headlines when 39 Asian migrants died in the back of a refrigerated truck in Essex. And bracket Ballyconnell alongside Bogota or Basra. The badlands around the Cavan and Fermanagh borders are the price of compromise left by a messy peace deal in 1998: neither government resolved to banish the criminal gangs running the area.
Kevin Lunney and his colleagues at QIH rescued a business and made it more successful and profitable than it was ever run by Seán Quinn – and the US investors who own the company secured the jobs.
If Mr Lunney had been born in the US and the company was based in Ballsbridge rather than Ballyconnell, the US Ambassador would have been demanding action and assurances from the Taoiseach.
The Garda Commissioner would have been instructed to clean up this domestic mess and end this international embarrassment. And whatever means and resources he required would be justified by smashing the gangs.
The Garda has access to enormous resources: from worldbeating forensic scientists and experienced detectives to the Criminal Assets Bureau and its financial expertise. And if they don’t have the specialist skills required, they can hire them in.
They took on the IRA – the most experienced, best-funded and resourced terrorist army of its time – and when the security of the State was threatened, An Garda Síochána won.
A new threat to QIH’s directors last week said ‘they hadn’t learned their lesson’, it was a ‘last warning’ and called on them to resign or face a ‘permanent solution’.
Local priest Fr Oliver O’Reilly condemned the ‘Mafia-style group that was behind the attack on Kevin Lunney and their ‘paymaster or paymasters’.
But QIH, Ballyconnell and Derrylin cannot wait for divine intervention – they need determined politicians demanding courageous policing.