With 30 assaults a day, there's a new sense of menace on the streets. Has random violence erupted in our cities and towns? Is it all down to too much drink? In the first of a four-part series, Kathy Sheridan looks at what's been happening in Cork, one part of the violent jigsaw
Christian Scully is not getting better; he remains critically ill. Reports of an "improvement" are misleading, says a close friend. These reports, and the fact one of the alleged assailants was free to roam the streets the morning after Christian Scully was kicked almost to death, have exacerbated the family's suffering. Universally regarded as a quiet, decent family, their lives are devastated, reduced to vigils around the 28-year-old's bed at Cork University Hospital. Scully shares a ward with 20-year-old Denis Franklin, a Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) chemistry student, also admitted with severe head injuries, two weeks later. The Franklins are under no illusions, either. "It's a life sentence for the six of us," says John Franklin. "Denis could not be worse. It could go on for the rest of our lives."
Cork is feeling battered; two murderous onslaughts on young men in the space of a couple of weeks, in a city still reeling from a vicious assault on 32-year-old Lila Dorgan, a Frenchwoman kicked so savagely that she may be unable to bear children.
What makes these attacks the stuff of common nightmares is that they were not the result of long-standing blood feuds or drug wars - at most, words might have been exchanged. Nor are they all the work of disadvantaged youth; some of the alleged attackers hail from the leafier areas.
While many in Cork assert the city has been "unlucky", no one is taking it lightly. A local garda admits he "nearly went under" the night he first saw the two terribly injured young men in the same ward.
The father of one of Franklin's alleged assailants is "desperately upset", according to a friend, "and hasn't been seen out since". The president of the CIT student union, Philip O'Reilly, claims young people are much less willing to go out on Saturday nights.
But Cork is not suffering alone. The death of 18-year-old Brian Murphy, after a fracas outside the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, convulsed the country, mainly because those involved were from middle-class backgrounds. Four young men have been charged with manslaughter.
A row outside a Thurles nightclub left a gifted young hurler, P.J. Delaney, in a coma for nine days and off work for nine months. A doorman testified that he had heard someone say: "Jump on his head".
Reports from around the country after St Patrick's Day demonstrate that no area is immune.
In Kilkenny, an 18-year-old male was found in a pool of blood after a broken bottle was plunged into his neck. In Castlebar, a 27-year-old needed stitches after being hit in the face with a bottle. In Waterford, three men were hospitalised after being slashed with a knife in a pub row.
In Drogheda, a garda tells the local paper that the streets are becoming a no-go area after 3 a.m. on weekends.
In Tralee and Ennis, half the residents say they feel threatened on the streets, according to an Ennis Chamber of Commerce survey. In Ennis, the main fear is of young people hanging around in groups.
Has something new and barbaric entered the hearts of young Irish people? Is it real, or just a passing sensation, hyped up by the media, electioneering politicians, and the age-old impulse of the middle-aged to bemoan the behaviour of the young?
We are entitled to be confused. Just 18 months ago, when Fine Gael raised the issue of escalating street violence, John O'Donoghue, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, said unequivocally in the Dáil there was no "appreciable increase in public order offences and street violence". It was wrong to draw conclusions about trends without checking Garda data, he chided. "When it comes to assessing the actual incidence of any particular form of offending . . . the level of media and public attention to it cannot be taken as a reliable measure."
But even as he was saying this, Garda Síochána figures showed the rate of violent assaults - assault occasioning actual bodily harm - was up 131 per cent on the previous year. This primarily came down to a change in the method of recording the statistics, but there was no clarification of how much of the increase was down to a real change in the incidence of violent assaults. The Garda failure to properly explain its change in data recording methods has made it virtually impossible to provide accurate year-on-year comparisons since 1998 - which hinders meaningful analysis of its indictable crime figures.Neverthless, in flesh-and-blood terms, the data showed violent assault was running at 30 victims a day.
Has it improved? According to the Garda, in the nine days between February 23rd and March 3rd this year, there were 300 major or minor assaults throughout the State. That's about 33 victims a day.
Nor does it end there, because the true figure may well be 10 times that. According to a study by Dr Stephen Cusack, an A & E consultant at Cork University Hospital (CUH), out of 542 cases triaged for "assault" in CUH in 2001, only 31 were reported to the Garda. And, he says, that figure of 542 is "extremely conservative" as it depends on the patient identifying assault as the cause of injury.
Dr Cusack is not easily alarmed. He has worked in Glasgow, where electronically-activated steel doors were a part of routine security. "But I think what we're facing here is an epidemic of thuggery. We had our first riot in the waiting room here a few weeks ago. People who had been out on the streets carried the fight up here at two o'clock in the morning . . . kicking and punching and throwing chairs, frightening staff and patients." The fact is, he says, that in terms of reporting violence (international figures show one in nine attacks is reported) and the incidence of it, the Republic is simply coming into line with international trends.
Over one randomly chosen weekend in February, "interpersonal violence" accounted for seven out of 272 new attendances at CUH. This gels with US Bureau of Justice statistics, which found that assault is responsible for 1.5 per cent of all A & E visits. There, as here, young males heavily dominate the statistics. Where we diverge is in the weaponry. In the US, knives or guns were used in 10 per cent of cases and other objects in 20 per cent. In the CUH sample, up to 10 per cent had been assaulted with a cutting instrument and about 5 per cent with an "object" - there were no guns.
And that is as much as we know. The rest is anecdotal. It is telling that in yet another of this State's frantic but utterly predictable bouts of self-examination, we have no Government-commissioned, independent, national research to call on - only small, voluntary studies such as Dr Cusack's.
To criminologist Dr Ian O'Donnell of UCD, the reliance on Garda data alone and the "traditional lack of explanatory text" render his research almost meaningless. For example, his analysis suggests that contrary to expectation, the number of indictable (serious) assaults and attempted murders were almost halved in the 1990s compared with the previous decade.
At the same time, according to the same statistics, murder and non-indictable assaults continued to soar. How can this be so?
The result is that while scrabbling around for urgent, vote-getting, solutions, we're not even sure what the questions are. So when John O'Donoghue told the Dáil in February that the increase in violence "among young men, in particular, has a lot to do with the mores of the day", we can only ask: which mores? Drink? Drugs? Drink and drugs? Greedy publicans? Inconsistent or poor policing? Parental neglect? Diminishing respect for people and property? Some new class of inner rage?
"Instead of getting ourselves into a twist - again - we could do a major study, like the one carried out by the Bureau of Justice", says Dr Cusack. "I have seen a huge increase in alcohol consumption in recent years and in concert with that, an increase in violence. But there are many who would say that we have had a huge alcohol problem for years and didn't have the violence. Some would say it is a breakdown in value systems. I just know that we are getting a lot more drunks and a lot more violence."
"The best predictor of an increase in violent crime is an increase in beer consumption," says Dr O'Donnell. "The one thing that is constant is the intimate connection between violence and alcohol."
If that is so, it spells trouble. The national alcohol policy adviser at the Department of Health, Dr Ann Hope, has identified a staggering 41 per cent increase in consumption per head in the past 10 years. A World Drinks Trend survey in 2000 showed the Republic had risen 10 places and was now second highest in the world (behind Luxembourg) - and it is believed the 18-25 age group is driving these figures.
In the first 22 days of Operation Encounter, launched in February by the Garda to tackle anti- social behaviour, 2,530 public order offences out of a total of 5,351 related to intoxication in a public place and 1,660 to threatening, insulting or abusive behaviour.
"In one in three cases involving violence in Ireland, both victim and perpetrator are intoxicated," says Dr O'Donnell. "More beer, more young people, more mobility, reduced inhibitions, potential offenders and potential victims, all soaked in alcohol. Little enough violence in my experience is unprovoked. Often the victim might be the person who came off worst in a fight."
Supt Kieran McGann, the widely respected garda at the coalface of Cork's fightback, agrees. "You have two guys who are extremely drunk. One guy is aggressive and can't think because he's drunk. The other guy has a low tolerance rate and can't take the abuse. One will lash out and the other - because he's drunk - will stagger and fall badly on the ground and the other guy, not thinking, will kick him while he's on the ground. In the movies, they get up . . ."
While brooding teenage gangs may make people fearful, underage drinking is not a major factor in assaults, where the age profile, says Cork TD, Batt O'Keeffe, is 19-plus.
Nor is drugs a prime element, says Dr Cusack. "Traditionally, cocaine is associated with a high rate of violence, but it's not a major feature in Cork." He believes it is the quantity of alcohol being drunk that lies at the heart of the problem.
Simon Coveney, the young Cork TD, agrees. "The fundamental problem is the amount of alcohol and the mix of alcohol and drugs which often change quiet and decent young people into something unrecognisable."
The new affluence of the young, with their double-income parents, is well documented. Those with jobs who continue to live at home have the money to indulge themselves. So when it comes to alcohol, money is no object. This, in turn, has led to a sea change in the type of alcohol being drunk. The current favourites are the high-alcohol "shot" drinks, such as Aftershock, Jagermeister, Goldschlager and Sidekick. Aftershock, for example, contains 40 per cent alcohol by volume, and is by no means the strongest in its class. Many in the pub trade are so wary of these "shots" they refuse to stock them.
Ger Kiely, who owns the Old Oak pub in Cork city, has gone further. He has never even stocked Red Bull. "Red Bull has a place in the market but that does not include vodka." He admits that "a lot of the problems out there are caused by our industry. It comes back to greed. After four or five pints, you get full, bloated, and the worst that will happen you after you stagger home will be a sore head the next day. But if you have a re-energiser [a shot or spirit/mixer], that will create an imaginary demand for more drink, despite your body saying the opposite."
And re-energisers, in pubs and clubs, are a runaway success, in terms of profits and popularity. A common strategy is to close the beer taps one or two hours before closing time and sell spirits and shots only. The result is that punters buy more rounds to keep up the supply and mix their drinks - with predictable results. By the time they are tossed out on the street, the pub/club owner has doubled the turnover..
Another win/win strategy for the operator is the "booze cruise", targeted at students who are offered cheap spirits in exchange for entrance money of say, €6. So he digs out the cheap spirits for the young patrons, sells it at cost, pockets the door money, and come closing-time, turfs up to 1,000 cheap-spirit-sodden young people on to the streets for the rest of the population to worry about.
What makes Cork both interesting and unlucky is that it was wrestling with all of this long before two young men's lives were devastated. Many operators of the so-called night-time economy are still in shock from the blitz launched by Supt McGann some 18 months ago. While Supt McGann promotes a strong partnership process with the pub/club owners, he complements this with rigourous enforcement. When they didn't co-operate, he simply pulled the shutters down on pubs and clubs at 1.30 a.m. and fought a case in the courts, taken by a club-owner, Paul Montgomery, who objected to the early closing time. "If bars could hold people till 1 a.m. and I could only open till 1.30 a.m., that was no good to me," says Montgomery, "but you have a guard there in the court saying he'll lose his eye in a row next week. Anyway, I was refused."
In return for increased co-operation, Supt McGann has now amended Cork licensing rules to 2 a.m. Under this arrangement - drawn up in partnership with the newly-formed Cork City Vintners Association (CCVA) - no one is allowed enter a premises after 1.30 a.m.
Alcohol service is stopped by 2 a.m., when the music is turned to "mellow" and the lights gradually brought up. By 2.30 a.m., there must be no alcohol in hand and by 3 a.m. everyone must be off the premises, calm, relatively sober and ready to go home. Montgomery is still not entirely happy - "on a point of principle" - but he accepts the compromise. There isn't much choice. McGann has let it be known that if there are further incidents, closing-time will revert to 1.30 a.m.
In the meantime, a Pub Watch scheme has been put in place between the CCVA (a group unhappy with their previous representation in the Vintners' Association) and the Garda.
As Ger Kiely and I walk the packed streets of Cork at 2.30 a.m. on the night of Holy Saturday, the queue is longest outside a club called Henry's, where there are 28 security men keeping an eye on 2,200 patrons. Virtually every pub and club has braces of burly security people on the doors.
On the streets, the worst of the incidents tonight involve dull-eyed youths (a lot of them) urinating against the handiest wall. Tonight there are 19 arrests, 15 of them for public order offences, and all of these alcohol-related. However, though the effects of drink are heavily in evidence, there is little sense of menace. The fact that the known flashpoints are well-manned with highly-visible gardaí may have something to do with it. Operation Encounter is still up and running. Near one takeaway, there are six gardaí calmly, soothingly, encouraging young loiterers to go home.
In all there are probably about 40 garadí on duty on this Bank Hiliday night, including special units. Not a lot for maybe 15,000 people pouring into the funnel that is central Cork - all at the same time, in a similar state of inebriation - and very few indeed compared with the 28-strong security presence maintained by Henry's for a seventh of that amount of people. But in any event, all is calm on this night.
The question everyone in Cork wants answered now is: how long will it last? How long can the CCVA maintain its crusade? How long, asks Batt O'Keeffe, before judges accept that asking young public order offenders, the affluent young, to pay money into the poor box, is no deterrent? Above all, how long before budgets kick in and the gardaí here tonight are re-deployed?
Supt McGann may be a "powerful good man", as one local put it, but even he hasn't the clout to magic up the resources everyone knows are needed before another young man ends up on a life support-machine in an Irish hospital.