A WAVE of paranoia sweeping across "Waterworld" would be the best way to sum up the mood of rural
Ireland over the past week. With the attention of the national media turned on the phenomenon of criminal safaris to rural areas to terrorise the locals, the Longford region "could experience a wave of paranoia", believed the Longford Leader.
The clamour for more prison spaces was a smoke-screen diverting attention away from the more fundamental aspects of fighting crime. The Longford Leader's remedy was to institute a "powerful control system throughout rural Ireland". This would involve putting another 2,000 - gardai into circulation, instituting the most sophisticated communications available and reopening on a 24-hour basis all of the local Garda stations which have closed down or changed to part-time in the past 15 years.
"Justice must be seen to be done," believed the People group. "The public wants those convicted of serious crime to serve the sentences imposed on them by the courts", a development which would require "several prisons" and the opening of the Curragh Camp as a detention centre.
Justice was not being seen to be done in the Connacht Tribune's's report that a woman jailed for the robbery of a tourist in Galway city spent only 20 days of her three- month sentence before being released again by the revolving door system.
Crime may currently be the most important issue for the Irish people, yet it did not seem to figure in a survey of their worries by students at the Regional Technical College, Athlone. According to the Roscommon Herald, 515- people of all ages across 18 counties said in March 1995 that money was their greatest worry (45 per cent), followed by "other people", including family and friends (39 per cent), personal health (32 per cent), exams (20 per cent) and features of current employment (IS per cent).
THERE was water, water everywhere, with Venetian- style transport rescuing stranded people on vast tracts of flooded land in Co Kilkenny. Inistioge was so completely flooded that Mr P. J. O'Carroll manned a boat to ferry people from the village over the flood area to the New Ross side, reported the Kilkenny People.
"Waterworld" is how the Echo described conditions in Wexford and the Tipperary Star described the "worst floods in 50 years". You could not help thinking that if all this had happened in Dublin, there would have been political outrage.
In Clonmel, the Nationalist reported "Fury as flooding disaster strikes". The explanation by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Howlin, that the great flood was "an act of God" didn't go down well in Clonmel. "Passing the buck to God is no consolation and is not the answer to the problem as far as the victims of this terrible flood are concerned," said the Nationalist, calling for an investigation.
The normally cautious Andersonstown News had one of its - most positive editorials yet on the peace process, commenting that Sinn Fein's back-to-basics submission to the International Body on Arms Decommissioning had enhanced the hopes of peace. Martin McGuinness's reiteration of the "absolute and clear objective of the removal of the gun forever from the political equation in Ireland" would be "rejected as meaningless" by Sinn Fein's traditional enemies. "But any- - one with the vaguest appreciation of the history and dynamics of Irish republicanism should be in no doubt- as to the importance of the restatement of this position."
Bring back those "daft" Roses, the Kerryman was told by broadcaster and man-about-Kerry, Gay Byrne. He said that he is looking forward to returning to Kerry next year as a judge for the Rose of Tralee, but thinks that "the committee are looking for a specific kind of girl and the jolly ones and the daft ones are weeded out, which is a pity."
IN a question bound to be the source of arguments in houses all over Dungarvan this week, the Dungarvan Leader asked, "So Mum thinks she keeps the house clean?" Its "Junior World" column, aimed no doubt at helping to form the attitudes of the next generation of young people, declared that "no matter how much your mum may dust, polish and sweep, pollution experts will still find your home filthy. Scientists have found there are 100,000,0000 (sic) specks of dust in every cubic inch of air - even after a good clean."
One can only imagine the consternation - not to mention the paranoia and the fits of screaming - erupting in households all over Dungarvan as Junior World readers brief "Mum" on dust statistics, such as the fact that 5,000,000 particles of dust are generated by walking across a room. Next time let's hope the Dungarvan Leader tells the kids to do the housework - especially the boys.