Month: May 2023

I was popular last week. I got a text message from an unknown number warrning me ‘You haven’t paid your charges, visit eflow-toll-deadline.com or an additional fine will be sent to your home’. That was strange, since I hadn’t been driving the car outside Cobh for the previous three months. Nobody else had driven my car to Dublin either, so I just deleted the message.

Then I got another text. This time it was purporting to be from Amazon, and they wanted me to contact them in relation to a payment I needed to make to continue with my order. Another mystery because I had no order, so I deleted that message too. Both of these texts looked official so the scammers who do this for a living have upped their game.

Then I got a phone call from another guy. I can’t remember who he said he was representing but he basically told me there was a problem and I needed switch on my laptop to fix it. He would talk me through the steps I needed to take, and everything would be fine.

I played along with him for a while and eventually I asked him if his family was proud of how he was earning a crust? I asked him if he was bothered by the fact that he was stealing money from innocent victims, but he wasn’t backing down. He didn’t appear to be embarrassed either. He was very confident and gave as good as he got before he finally hung up.

He was hoping I would follow his instructions which would give him access to my computer so he could monitor my online transactions. Once he was in, he would have my passwords, credit card numbers, pin numbers etc. That would give him some free shopping until the fraud was detected.

This kind of activity is very common and has added two important words to our vocabulary – phishing and smishing.

Phishing is a cybercrime where people are contacted by email, telephone or text message by someone posing as a legitimate institution to lure individuals into providing sensitive data such as personally identifiable information, banking and credit card details, and passwords. The information is then used to access important accounts and can result in identity theft and financial loss.

Smishing is a combination of the words “SMS” and “phishing” and is a scam where fraudsters use mobile phone text messages to trick you into opening a malicious attachment or link. Typically, the text messages claim to come from a reputable organisation such as your bank, card issuer, a service provider like your mobile phone company, or even a government department.

They’re very convincing so we need to be wary of these people. They’re targeting WhatsApp users too with the ‘friend in need’ confidence trick. There are a couple of variations but usually a parent gets a message from a supposed family member with “Hello Mam” or “Hello Dad”.

The pretend child will say that they are texting from a new mobile number as their phone was lost or damaged and will ask for money to either purchase a new phone, or to pay a bill. Another version is a message from a ‘friend’ abroad who needs funds urgently and asks for help. The criminal supplies bank details for payment and collects the money.

The general advice is not to send money anywhere until you’re sure of where it’s going and until the identity of the person receiving it can be verified. Don’t click on any suspicious links in emails or text messages and never respond to suspicious messages that direct you to send money or change your bank details. Don’t give any personal details, bank account details or card information and contact your local Garda station if you believe you are a victim of a cyber-crime.

We have something else to worry about now. Criminals are targeting smart phone users in a caper known as “shoulder surfing”. The criminals look over people’s shoulders as they enter their phone passcode and then steal their phones. According to the Wall Street Journal, ‘shoulder-surfing’ gangs were targeting people in bars in US cities and London. They unlock passwords stored on the device allowing them access to financial apps.

Even those looking for companionship on the Internet aren’t safe. While checking the garda website for advice on dealing with fraudsters, I came across a piece advising people to beware of Romance Scams.

People searching for a partner on the Internet often believe they have met their perfect match, but the other person could be a scammer using a fake profile to build the relationship. They slowly gain the victim’s trust before eventually asking for money.

One Irish woman was showered with expensive gifts before she was asked to invest in her suitor’s business. Over a thirteen-month period, the woman gave the romance fraudster €48,000. The woman initially delayed reporting the fraud to Gardaí as she was married.

These characters prey on emotionally vulnerable victims and have only one thing in mind and it’s not romance. Desiree Boltos, the “Sweetheart Swindler”, was a serial romance scammer. She was sent to prison in America for scamming elderly people by pretending to be in love with them. Over a five-year period, she conned five men and one woman out of $1.6 million.

Romance seekers might be safer with face-to-face meetings at the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival. The festival is over 165 years old and completely different from online dating services. Those looking for love can meet Ireland’s only traditional matchmaker in the Matchmaker Bar where legend says if you touch his ‘lucky book’ with both hands, you’ll be married in six months!

They’ve no time for that auld Internet stuff there.

I heard in the news recently, reference being made to a world happiness index and Ireland’s position on it. The newsreader told us that Ireland’s place on this index had fallen slightly since the previous year, down one place from 13^th to 14^th. I had no idea what they were on about.

Apparently, there are 146 countries listed on this index and the closer you are to the number one spot, the happier that nation is. So, on the face of it, being ranked 14^th seems pretty impressive but on the other hand we were 13^th last year so we’re not as happy now as we were twelve months ago so that’s not good.

But what exactly are we supposed to do with this information? Should we lodge a complaint and demand we be returned to our rightful position and if so, who do we complain to? Somebody is deciding whether I’m happy or not and ranking me on a list based on how happy or how miserable I am at a given time and I want to know who they are?

Apparently, it started twelve years ago when the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on 19 July 2011, inviting national governments to “give more importance to happiness and well-being in determining how to achieve and measure social and economic development.

That’s a fine mouthful but it basically means that governments were going to get guidelines on how to make its citizens happy. The citizens were then going to be polled to establish how happy they were, and the results of the polls would be reflected in a list and ranked in order of happiness which became the World Happiness Index.

The results are announced every year in the World Happiness Report, which is a publication of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, powered by the Gallup World Poll data. The report reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy. It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

Something else I wasn’t aware of is that 20th March is observed annually as the International Day of Happiness and according to the people involved in this report, the natural way to measure a nation’s happiness is to ask a nationally representative sample of people how satisfied they are with their lives at the time.

Life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll provide the basis for the annual happiness rankings. They are based on answers to the main life evaluation question and respondents are asked to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale.

I was a little confused by this because as far as I can remember, I have never taken part in any poll concerning my state of mind. I wasn’t aware that anyone was worried about my level of satisfaction with life but if anyone had bothered to ask me, they would have received different responses depending on when they inquired.

For instance, if someone approached me with a clip board to ask me about my level of happiness with the world as I was having my prostate extracted from my body, they would have discovered my misery was at a level they had yet to experience.

If they asked me how happy I was in the aftermath of having a couple of metal rods planted in my back, the pollster would probably have needed some medical intervention to remove said clipboard.

On the other hand, if I was asked the same question as I was stepping off a plane having landed in Cyprus for a holiday in the sun, my happiness level would be through the roof. If Leeds United remain in the Premiership at the end of the football season my joy will be unbridled, and I would easily score a 10 on that happiness ladder. So, what’s the point of it?

Well, for a start we should be paying a bit more attention to Finland. They’re not known for being very chatty. In fact, they have a reputation for being unsociable and a bit glum. There’s a long-standing joke about two Finns going to a bar for a drink. One says, “Cheers.” The other asks grumpily, “Have we come here to talk or to drink?”

Still, they have held the number one spot for the last six years so they must be doing something right. Denmark and Iceland are in second and third place respectively and I would have considered those places to be cold at the best of times, so I don’t know what they’re so happy about.

On the other hand, Cyprus is down in 38^th place despite having a wonderful Mediterranean climate so obviously happiness isn’t all down to the weather. Afghanistan occupies the last position at 146 ranking them as the unhappiest nation in the world which probably won’t come as much of a surprise given the unrest in that country.

According to the report though, the happiness scores take other factors into consideration too, like how individuals feel about the state of their country, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption. The effectiveness of the government has a major influence on human happiness of the people which worries me when I consider I might have to rely on Eamon Ryan and his colleagues to put a smile on my face.

Given the state of housing, health care, and homelessness here, I’m surprised we didn’t beat Afghanistan in a race to the bottom of this happiness index.

It seems a member of An Garda Siochana is to face a criminal prosecution over his driving in relation to an incident in which three men were killed in a collision while fleeing gardai.

The DPP has directed a garda involved in the pursuit of the three males who were members of a Tallaght-based criminal gang that specialised in burglaries, is to be charged with a driving offence. The three victims were killed instantly when their BMW vehicle burst into flames following a head-on crash with a truck on the N7 in 2021, while they were driving on the wrong side of the carriageway.

It remains to be seen what charges the garda is going to face but garda management needs to stand up and be counted here. Gardai in the course of their duty have a right to expect leadership and support. 

Many years ago, I was involved in an accident while driving a patrol car. It was on a Sunday evening while in pursuit of a stolen car. There was a lot of damage done to several cars. The following morning, I showed up for work at 6am and at 9am the superintendent arrived in the public office.

The first thing he asked me was how I was feeling. Then he told me not to worry one bit about the damage to the cars. That can all be fixed he said. Then he insisted I visit my GP in case I was suffering from shock that I mightn’t be aware of. I was fine but what he displayed that morning was leadership and support. I’m not sure if there is much of that around today.

Policing in Ireland is in a difficult place at the moment. An Garda Siochana is on a downward spiral with lack of morale, a rising number of resignations and poor recruitment. Young members are stifled with oversight, tied to their PULSE machines and consumed with fear of making a mistake and the likely sanctions that could follow.

I can’t imagine that the young men and women entering the Garda Training College these days are much different to those of us who joined in earlier times. We were anxious to get the training over with and get out on the beat where we hoped we could make a difference.

We were proud to wear the uniform and follow in the footsteps of so many of our well-respected predecessors. We wanted to be seen.

During my thirty-five year service, I was privileged to have worked with some fine men and women. I witnessed many examples of bravery and courage by dedicated members who often went above and beyond what was required or expected of them.

There were difficult times too. It’s impossible to spend a lifetime as a police officer without seeing the evil side of society. Dealing with the deaths and injuries sustained through accident or design are part of the job. Violence is always a possibility, and danger is a regular visitor, but we expected that. We were trained for it.

We were happy to do deal with whatever came our way because back then we knew our colleagues were there in support. When we found ourselves in sticky situations, back up was never far away and it was important to know that.

Confronting burglars in the middle of the night, dealing with rows, assaults, armed robberies etc are fraught with danger but gardai deal with these situations on a regular basis without giving them a second thought. Preservation of life and protection of property is what policing is all about. The automatic response is to get stuck in.

That could change if garda management doesn’t support its members and not just in the rough and tumble stuff either.

Community engagement is important too. Being out and about, meeting people, getting to know them and being there for them when they need help matters. It’s what we’ve done since the foundation of the State, and we were good at it.

There is a new method of policing in this country currently that I don’t recognise. I have written previously about the lack of community engagement. Garda visibility is becoming increasingly scarce which is creating a void, a void that will be filled with an alternative we may not be too happy with.

If you want an example of where we are now, take a look at Ailin Quinlans piece in The Echo about her recent experience in the west Cork town of Clonakilty. It is typical of the stories I hear from all over the island, but few have raised my hackles as much as this.

She had a run-in with a guy on an e-scooter who had frightened an elderly lady. He completely ignored Ailin’s plea to be careful and went on his way. The elderly lady wondered why she never saw a garda on foot around the place anymore. A fair question.

Soon after that incident, Ailin witnessed vandalism taking place in the town’s Emmet Square, which she describes as a beautifully landscaped little park full of seats and well-established shrubbery. She rang the local gardaí and reported both incidents and asked if they could get somebody into the town?

The guard took her name and number, then informed her that her call would have to be patched through to a central control room before anything could be done by the local gardai. She was told that all questions, which included whether she wanted to be interviewed personally by a member of the Garda Siochana, had to be gone through before the gardaí could be authorised to attend the incident.

As she walked away, she heard one of the teenagers say: “Lads, your ‘wan is after calling the guards”. They all laughed heartily. And why wouldn’t they.

I was watching a tennis match on TV earlier this year, when I saw a young player throwing a tantrum. He has just turned nineteen years of age and has enough talent to suggest he is going to be a star in the future. An exciting prospect for sure, but he went downhill in my estimation after his antics on court, not that my opinion will upset him too much.

During one game, when things weren’t going his way, he began screaming at the box where his family and his support team were sitting. He was speaking in a foreign language but one of the commentators suggested he was ordering his mother to leave the viewing area. Shortly after his outburst, she did just that. Later at the press conference, he denied shouting at his mother and said he was aiming his tirade at someone else.

At the end of the match, both players approached the net where the etiquette of the game requires them to shake hands. The exchange wasn’t captured clearly on TV, but the young lad didn’t appear to shake hands. The surprised look on the face of his opponent seemed to indicate that no hand was proffered. That’s unacceptable but he later denied that accusation too.

I felt sorry for his parents. I don’t know anything about the family, but I do know a little about tennis and that young man would not be where he is today without the support of his parents. A player doesn’t get to that standard on talent alone and it doesn’t happen overnight either. It begins at a young age and takes a serious commitment by the family over many years.

They have obviously invested heavily in him, not only financially, but also in the time spent transporting him to and from training sessions and tournaments. He would do well to remember that but at the moment, it looks like his memory is failing him. He’s had it good for so long, he now feels entitled to behave as he sees fit.

It will be interesting to see how he develops as he matures but his current behaviour won’t do his reputation or his popularity much good. He’s acting like a spoiled young man who sees himself as the centre of the Universe, there to be loved and admired by the rest of us. A trait that is becoming all too common unfortunately.

I have said here previously that the vast majority of people I came into contact with during my thirty-five years as a member of An Garda Siochana were decent and honest. Regular people going through their daily routines while dealing with the ups and downs in life that we all have to cope with. It was only the very small minority who created problems.

The same can be said about young people and children. 95% of them were well behaved but I am beginning to see a changing pattern. I feel there is less respect for older people, property and authority now and I’m not the only one who has noticed it.

The Times UK reported recently that the plight of Britain’s schoolchildren has reached a post-pandemic crisis point. They’ve seen a rise in pupils behaving badly as well as children being sad, depressed, and anxious and their behaviour issues included defiance and violence.

Covid is being blamed for some of this, but I think it started long before the pandemic. I reckon it has to do with how difficult it is to challenge children for bad behaviour these days. My teacher friends tell me that correcting a child’s behaviour in school is fraught with danger and will often result in a confrontation with the parents. Not always confined to school grounds either.

Many parents don’t even recognise bad behaviour for what it is. Children stepping out of line, are often described as just expressing themselves. The problem with allowing them to ‘express themselves’ unchecked is that they grow up with a sense of entitlement and a belief they can do what they like.

There was a time when being corrected by teachers was normal. They weren’t afraid to challenge bad behaviour when they saw it and we were better for it. Admittedly, some of them took discipline to extremes but the gratuitous violence of old school days is long gone.

It’s no longer acceptable to slap a child. That’s now considered to be a physical attack, punishable under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 in the same way as any assault on an adult, or the Cruelty Against Children Act 2001. That shouldn’t mean children can’t be chastised though.

Gone are the days when it was acceptable to get a clip around the ear which is fair enough but looking back on it, I think for the majority of us, it was the shock more than the contact that hurt us. It certainly wasn’t brutal but now we’ve gone the other way and these days you can’t say boo to a child.

The modern approach is different. This is advice on how to deal with a difficult child is offered on the Internet:

If your child walks out the door after you’ve told them they can’t leave, or your child calls you a name, set the boundary: “I will not let you disrespect me” or “I won’t allow hurtful language in this home” or “I trust you will find a different way to deal with your frustration.”

Harsh consequences for disrespectful behaviour can sometimes just fuel the fire. Remember that discipline means “to teach,” show you child what kind behaviour looks like by responding with a hug.

If my generation disrespected our parents, there wasn’t much of a discussion about it and a hug was the last thing you expected.

The death penalty is a controversial subject at the best of times, and I have mixed views on it. I must admit there were times during my service in An Garda Siochana when I supported it. In fact, there were a few occasions, when I would gladly have flipped the switch myself. The subject has arisen in conversations again recently following the conviction of Stephen Silver.

Silver was jailed for life for the capital murder of Detective Garda Colm Horkan. He shot the garda eleven times, but he will not be executed. Up until 1990, the capital murder of a garda, a prison officer or a diplomat was punishable by execution in Ireland, but the death penalty was abolished in 1990 and replaced with a 40-year mandatory sentence.

The last person to be legally executed in this jurisdiction was Michael Manning, a 25-year-old Limerick man. In 1954, Manning was executed by hanging at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, where he was later buried in an unmarked grave. According to irishcentral.com he was found guilty of the rape and murder of Catherine Cooper (65) who worked at Barrington’s Hospital in the city.

The defence team had claimed insanity and wanted the charges reduced to manslaughter as Manning had not planned the attack in advance. While there was a history of mental health issues in his family the judge sided with the prosecution and told the jury to discard the argument, as he claimed the fact that Manning has shoved clods of grass into the victim’s mouth to stop her screaming showed he was aware of the crime he was committing.

Around that same time, there a campaign to have the death penalty abolished and in 1964, under Charles Haughey as Minister for Justice, the death penalty was abolished except for cases involving the murder of a garda or a prison officer.

Noel and Marie Murray were convicted of the capital murder of Garda Michael Reynolds following an armed robbery in Dublin in 1975. However, their capital conviction was overturned, and they received a life sentence.

Noel Callan and Michael McHugh were sentenced to death for the murder of Sergeant Patrick Morrissey following a robbery in County Louth in 1985. Their capital conviction was also overturned, and they were sentenced to 40 years in prison. A decision that wasn’t popular with many members of An Garda Siochana or the Defence Forces at the time.

Unlike Manning, Stephen Silver will not be hanged but will serve a prison sentence instead. The judge sentenced him to life imprisonment in accordance with the Criminal Justice Act 1990 and specified that he must serve a minimum of 40 years in prison.

That same Act permits remission for good behaviour, so Silver could apply for parole after serving 30 years. He will be in his mid-seventies before he can be considered for release by a parole board. Whether you agree with that or not is a moot point because that’s the system we use now. Opponents of the death penalty would argue that’s a good thing.

They cite examples of prisoners who have been executed for crimes they didn’t commit. That, of course, is an injustice that can never be rectified so for that reason alone, there are many who campaign for its abolishment. For them, life in prison is the preferred choice of punishment.

In the US, jurors have the option of sentencing convicted capital murderers to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That keeps them off the streets for good and also allows for mistakes to be corrected.

That option though, puts an onus on the State to mind them for the rest of their natural lives at enormous expense to the taxpayer but opponents would argue that years of endless appeals can be just as expensive. They also say that some family members of victims feel the death penalty doesn’t ease their pain. In fact, it can often add to it because the process can be lengthy and can prolong the agony for the family.

On the other hand, supporters say the death penalty gives closure to the victim’s families. The criminal is no longer around to haunt them, and the execution brings finality to the tragic event. DNA testing can now effectively eliminate all doubt as to a person’s guilt or innocence and while we can never be 100% certain, it’s as close as you can get.

Another interesting question though is at what point does an execution become pointless? If a prisoner on death row develops a terminal illness and is certain to die, is there really a need to go ahead with an execution? Or if an inmate becomes afflicted with dementia and can no longer remember what his crime was, is it right to execute him if he doesn’t understand why he is being punished in the first place?

Doyle Hamm was 61 and terminally ill with lymphatic cancer when Alabama tried to execute him in 2018. Hamm’s failing health rendered it impossible for prison officials to find a usable vein after hours of trying. He eventually died after a long illness in 2021.

In Ohio, officials tried and failed to execute Alva Campbell, who was already dying of cancer He was unable to walk, used a colostomy bag and required four breathing treatments per day. Officials called off the execution in 2017 after they couldn’t find a vein, and Campbell later died in his cell of natural causes.

In 2018, Vernon Madison was facing execution in Alabama even though he couldn’t remember his crime. Several strokes and dementia had wiped out his memory of murdering a police officer in 1985. The US Supreme Court ruled that people cannot be executed if they don’t understand why they are being punished. Hard to disagree with that.