Gang shootings in Galway ‘are inevitable’

Date Published: 18-Mar-2010

By Dara Bradley, Galway City Tribune

Galway city is not immune to the wave of gangland shootings and murders carried out by organised criminals who have wreaked terror in Limerick and Dublin, according to the country’s leading investigative crime reporter.

Journalist Paul Williams said there is “extensive criminal activity in Galway” which is mostly related to the lucrative drugs trade that is fuelled by the city’s “cosmopolitan” residents.

He warned that if the criminal gangs who control the drugs market in the city fall out and begin feuding – something that could easily happen, he says – then gangland shootings and murders are inevitable here.

“We are in a stage where organised crime thrived and moved geographically around the county much more since the late 1990s because the drug trade completely mushroomed and boomed in conjunction with and parallel to the Celtic Tiger because so many people were taking drugs,” said Mr Williams speaking on Thursday morning to Keith Finnegan on Galway Bay FM’s current affairs show.

“Galway is a very cosmopolitan, modern and vibrant place and wherever there are modern and vibrant people they will be taking drugs and then there is a demand for their (criminals’) wares. They will be there a long time before you see them and until somebody goes along and shoots somebody dead in a row over money, or over drugs, you don’t think about the problem of what they are doing or their existence there.

"The Gardaí in Galway are continuously bringing people before the courts on drug charges and firearms – and they’ve had a few significant seizures recently – so every town and every city in Ireland is affected. Serious crime is very much a part of our lives everywhere.

"Stuff that would have seemed very exotic or very unusual before, like murders were only happening in Dublin and Limerick but now the criminals are branching out. There is criminal activity everywhere and there is extensive criminal activity in Galway,” he said.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune