The Coadjutor Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev Diarmuid Martin, has said he is "shocked" since returning to Dublin by the number of murders that take place.
Dr Martin described them as "the result of a shameless gun culture, often managed by powerful criminals whose business is to destroy so many lives in another way, through the sale of drugs. This is something we can ignore only at our risk."
He also said: "Migrants are people and have rights. They are people with families, and a nation like Ireland, which constitutionally and justly holds the family in such esteem, cannot be insensitive to the family dimensions of immigration policy."
The Archbishop was speaking at a Church in the Wider World - a 21st Century Response conference at Enfield, Co Meath, yesterday. It was sponsored by the Irish Missionary Union, the National Mission Council and Trócaire.
Speaking to The Irish Times, Dr Martin said murder had been rare in Ireland in the past. The two things which he had found most shocking since returning last August (after being away for 25 years), were the number of murders and healthcare.
Communities must speak out on the murders, he said. There "should be much more condemnation of this and people should be very clear that this type of activity is never acceptable".
It was terrifying that gangs were allowed to exercise power over communities. He warned against allowing this to continue as he had seen elsewhere how people who feared gangs later turned to them for protection.
"The effectiveness of a response to the gangs is very, very important to the rule of law. This requires courage on the part of communities, but if something is not done, the gangs will become even more powerful," he said.
In his address, Dr Martin also said that where migration was concerned, "we here in Ireland would be very hypocritical if we did not realise that we used emigration as a safety valve in our economic development".
We knew the suffering but also that our emigrants had contributed greatly to their new nations and had flourished. "Remittances were an important dimension of the Irish economy for decades.
"Why should others not be permitted to benefit, in a decent manner, from the opportunities which migration offers?"
