Aggravated burglary in Sligo

It's not what I actually said.

Incidents such as this are the reason older members of society especially those on their own are afraid in their own homes. These scumbags should rot in jail and hopefully get a weekly beating same as they did to Tom.

I hope the people close to the perpetrators come forward.

Some of of know of families with new cars, good clothes, glitzy Weddings, Communions, etc.

These people sometimes have no jobs and survive on social welfare and have being in and out of prison over the years.

If I comment on where do these people get the money from for such luxuries I'd be told I'm a begrudger be some people.

I live in a rural area and people are terrified of these guys calling around sometimes acting as salesmen. They call around selling socks, boots, tools, knifes, etc

In my opinion they just want to know do you keep cash in the house or do you have anything worth steeling.

They can be fairly intimidating guys and will totally knock people's confidence. Some just buy stuff to get rid of them.

The Gardaí often have a fair idea who did it but it can be hard to prove and when they do they'll be out of jail in very little time if they went at all.

An old man in such a rural location targeted like this has to have some local spotter involved that passes the info on to the scumbags outside the area who then do the job. Or someone working in a bank/post office where he may have withdrawn money and the info got passed on.

What we should do is lock these **** away and when they get out leave them to die in the street.

What we do is give them a free house, benefits, fuel allowance, medical card etc etc

Paul Murphy who said he was elected to break the law.

Honestly for a country of 5 million look at the crimes over the last few weeks.

The county is vanishing down a toilet bowl rapidly, quicker than anyone ever imagined.

I don't want to pay for people to stay in prison who would break both the eye sockets of a 73 year old man

I would like to see them removed from society permanently

It's not allowed to be an election issue. RTE and the rest of the media as well as every NGO would dog pile on anyone who did.

We're meant to believe that after a presidential election were over 20% suddenly appeared or changed their vote based on a nothing comment about travellers that no other politician even some random independent in a GE where votes are worth more hasn't thought of doing the same.

It's a fixed game and none of them want to fight for their place at the trough, the left don't want to try for their socialist utopia as it'd be difficult and probably fail, the greens won't push for anything too big as it might effect them, and what passes as right wing in Ireland (occasional nothing comments from Leo) barely matter amount to anything. Same piss coming out of a different tap.

Even just getting rid of concurrent sentencing would make a huge difference.

But we're not getting that, and from the recent enough supreme court ruling on the firearms repeat offenders we're not getting anything at all as they found it unconstitutional to apply mandatory sentencing guidelines to a particular class of people (repeat offenders).

So any legislators has to apply to everyone, and then the judges have full control over sentencing and continue to hand out soft sentences when it suits.

Just read over the debates for the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill 2021, it's infuriating.

Yes, it does.

Happened to an old man here where I live a few years ago, they tied him to a chair and roughed him up taking cash and making him write a cheque for a few thousand as well.

He was too frightened to ring the Guards and 2 days later they returned and roughed him up again because they couldn't cash the cheque.

These people are pure scum and they have no fear of the justice system we have in this country.

Meh.

Respect for the weaker members of the community is one of the hallmarks of a civilised country.

Old people deserve respect and a bit of extra consideration.

"Low hanging fruit" is not a term I would use to describe them.