OUR VIEW: Anarchy is threatening our Dundalk and the clampdown must be firm

Clanbrassil Street now has physical damage to go with its economic and existential suffering. A photograph taken of The Market Bar on Saturday morning in between the gutted fronts of AIB and Ulster Bank eloquently summed up Dundalk town centre’s present predicament.

You have a pristine establishment which ought to be thriving approaching the summer months, heaving with clientele at weekends and even for midweek lunches. Closed, its shutters tacked to the ground and with little assurance that they won’t remain so for some time to come.

Then you have two banking outlets, adjacent to the epicentre of our town, with gaping holes and wreckage scattered over a few feet in front. In one frame, there is calamity beyond the power of description. The destruction is both palpable and invisible. Buildings dissected either side of business stood still.

To think of all the work put in by people with strong intentions over the last number of years, do gooders aspiring to bring industry and life back to the heart of Dundalk. Think of the regeneration efforts which have freshened up the street. There are fewer vacant properties compared to, say, five years ago and hope that Clanbrassil Street could continue to support the livelihoods of many.

Now, well, the picture is bleaker. Covid-19 and its devastating effect may well have had a fatal impact on many businesses who were previously getting by. There have been many days over the last number of weeks where you could have taken a football and played five-a-side on portions of road through.

How do you recover from the mass shutdown? When banks aren’t safe from human attack, what chance have sole traders against an indiscernible, indiscriminate enemy?

Unfortunately, there is no fast solution to the health epidemic, but we can at least start some sort of social recovery by harnessing the potential for any further attack.

Let’s face it, this event was hardly unexpected given the north-east has been a hotspot for attempted ATM raids.
Some successful, others not.

When those responsible have the impudence to try to barricade the Garda Station, a monument to law and order, then we’re so far past the line on the wrong side that it’s hard to see a way back. There is an increasing cross-border threat and a sense that many believe they are above the constraints of the constitution.

The incredible scale of organised robbery in these parts is off the chart and has engendered an alarming sense of fear among constituents of many rural communities. A Democrat staff member lost their grandmother suddenly last year, only a matter of weeks after her house was burgled as she attended morning mass. Her death can’t be correlated precisely with the events of a month or so prior, but it could hardly have been good for someone elderly and increasingly frail.

Again, many border settlements are continuing to go to bed at night with the sound of boyracers racking their brains into the early hours. Or even earlier. Try walking down the road and having a car turning the cross on two wheels having spun on its axis three or four times. The freezing sensation one can feel is hard to phrase.

Then there is the age-old problem of fuel laundering and sludge-filled containers being dumped at a select number of places around the county’s northern periphery. Just because people have got used to seeing them and having to report their presence doesn’t make it any less of an issue.

Anarchy is threatening to take the greater Dundalk area vice-grip-like and Saturday’s incident is just the latest in an ever-lengthening list of examples suggesting as much.

Credit is due to a largely helpless local An Garda Siochana regiment for cooperating with their northern colleagues to detain some of those responsible while recovering the looted property.

But we remain locked in a spell of deeply unsettling uncertainty. Our society is being victimised in several ways and it’s hard to fathom a fashion of effectively dealing with it. Coronavirus containment revolves around self-isolation and limited communal contact, for the time being anyway. It won’t be like this forever and we can only hope that industry can recover.

However, for far too long lawbreakers have roamed freely. Containment and isolation aren’t going to deal with them and allow communities to feel safe again. There must be a firmer clampdown or else anti-social mobocracy will continue to prevail.