Unlike the Capital of Northern Ireland, the Protestant minority, here in Dublin, mingles successfully with the Catholic people. Surely we have our different ways of looking at life, but we agree to differ, and sometimes agree to agree on at least the small matters of doctrine and belief. We also have our down side, of course. The ever increasing drugs problem, inevitably leads to crime growing at an alarming rate. The once quiet suburban streets are alive with the muggers and handbag snatchers of the modern metropolis.
Car theft is rampant, and even the murder rate is rising.
At times the situation is likened to that of New York, or the Chicago of the early twentieth century, but we live with it and it impinges only on a small minority, who are unfortunate enough to fall victim of the ravages of petty, and not so petty crime. These are the streets which echoed to the steps of Oliver Goldsmith and Oscar Wilde. Walk down any city street, and you will hear the raucous music of the latest hit exploding from the doors of the department stores, in order to lure the innocent passer by within it's comfortable walls. Around the next corner the itinerant beggar will sing an old ballad he heard from his Grandfather, with all the enthusiasm of a winner of the National Lottery. Cars, trucks and people add to the general cacophony, the traffic, indeed, becoming as congested as London, England, where the orbital motorway is sometimes referred to as the largest car park in Europe.