The site Limerick Blogger (http://thelimerick.blogspot.com) has being doing a sterling job of collating information about the violence that has been unfolding in that city’s Moyross suburb. The apparently humdrum routine of petrol bombing your neighbour’s gaff segued into something far darker with the horrific arson attack on a car with two children inside. The children, a six-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy, have been moved to the Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, where they are undergoing treatment for severe burns. Latest reports suggest that one of the two teenagers arrested in connection with the attack might have acted as he did because the mother of the children refused to give him a lift. Guess where he wanted to go? The courthouse.

Sometimes you feel your fragile facade of the understanding liberal–who acknowledges that criminality and brutishness are rooted in poverty and dysfunctional family life–begin to collapse. What is left is a person who thinks that some judicious use of, say, waterboarding techniques, might not entirely be amiss.

But that way madness, and torch-wielding villagers (also known as the Garda reserve), lies.

No, maybe the only hope for blighted suburbs such as these can be found (surprise, surprise) in the property market. To say places like Moyross have problems is a bit like saying local TD Willie “Corporal” O’Dea is sometimes prone to slight gaffes. But in Dublin, areas the young bourgeoisie would not have touched with a barge pole fifteen years ago have suddenly become desirable, or at least acceptable. In wake of this sea-change, no apartment in Smithfield or the Liberties is more than 5 minutes from a paper cup-served mocha. (One of the five symptoms of gentrification.)

Of course, prices might have to skyrocket quite a bit further for certain suburbs to become, in estate-agent speak, a “destination” (as opposed to “terminal”). Perhaps to the point–mirroring that famous anecdote about the Imperial Palace in Tokyo–when a house in Shrewsbury Road becomes more valuable than all the property, in say, Portugal. But that will probably occur sometime in mid-2009. And where else in the state can you buy a 3-bedroom house for 75,000 euro?
(The above ruminations constitute a pretty feeble solution, I admit. But I would have entirely breached the bounds of credibility if I had had the nerve to suggest that the police and the judicial system were going to sort out the chaos.)