As a matter of course, I phone the cops where regular things are going on in our area and the desk sergeant barely seems to know where my estate is. In the past, when we had significant anti-social problems, a couple of years we were able – through contacts and support – to get the Gards to patrol more. However our dutyful reporting doesn’t seem to get much of a response and we rarely see cops patrolling the estate since the MoJ became MoF.

Perhaps your crime incident sounds more CSI-like and therefore more interesting, attracting squad cars like bees to honey, but it still doesnt account for the culture of containment on reporting/ documenting crime, does it? As a sociologist, I would be very dubious on Irish crime statistics meaning anything because of unreported incidents, etc.. Put it another way, MP, the Irish govt could claim in the run-up to the decriminalisation of homosexuality that the law had never been implemented, and yet stats and legal cases showed another face of State power. It’s all a bit mad, no? Send for Poirot!