THE 16th annual Patrick McGill International Summer School came to life in the sedate and sunny town of Glenties yesterday evening.
The week long school will focus on whether Irish society is drifting towards lawlessness.
Reference to lawlessness tributes to the life of Patrick McGill and, briefly, the tale of a car accident, were made from the podium in the Highland Hotel.
"Our definitions of crime and criminals have largely changed in the last few years, said Judge Scan Delap of Dublin District Court, officially opening he school.
"It was thought that serious crime was urban based and that rural areas were self policing," he said.
The three main changes in relation to Irish crime were its viciousness, the excessive use of firearms and the common motive of drugs. He was worried at the lack of prison spaces.
There are not enough resources," he said. "The current lack of space makes it difficult to enforce consecutive sentences." He emphasised, however, that he still had confidence in the legislative process, saying he had seen five separate Dublin crime dynasties come and go in his time.
He also praised recent legislation. The introduction of community service of is the most important piece legislation this century and I am glad to say it is 85 per cent successful."
Judge Delap, from Gweedore, expressed the pleasure he felt in opening the McGill school given that "judges arc experts in closing things".
Patrick McGill's daughter, Ms Patricia McGill McGowan, informed the audience that her vehicle had been written off on her way to the opening before going on to talk about her father, with illustrative clippings and photographs.
Describing her parents' life together, Ms McGill McGowan said: "The two of them gave us an example of a perfectly wonderful marriage."
She told her audience that Patrick McGill had died in 1963, one day after John F Kennedy was assassinated. He is buried in Ms McGill's home town of Fall River, Massachusetts.
After the first McGill School in 1972, she brought some soil from Glenties to scatter on his grave. In paying tribute to her father's writings, she recalled the words of an interviewer who spent an afternoon in his company.
To hear him is to be lost with him in a land of fantasy with all the grim realities of a workaday world forgotten," he wrote.
Tomorrow evening's speakers include Ms Olive Braiden, director of the Rape Crisis Centre, and Dr James McDaid, Fianna Fail TD.