'Violence can be interrupted' - Calls for public health approach to Ballymun crime
Communities in Ballymun “do not have to accept violence as inevitable” says a local councillor campaigning for a public health approach to violence.
People Before Profit Councillor Conor Reddy has responded to an incident involving a car driven into a house in Belclare Avenue before being set ablaze. With a man and a teenager sustaining injuries from the pipe bomb attack, the Ballymun-Finglas representative said the incident feeds into systemic issues that must be interrupted at their source.
The incident follows the detonation of a grenade in the Hampton Wood area, a number of attacks on homes and an incident in the Sillogue area where a child found and discharged a semi-automatic weapon . The events are understood to be part of a local feud that began with the suspected murder of 23-year-old Kevin Kelly .
“As a public representative in Ballymun, I think it’s important to say clearly that communities do not have to accept violence as inevitable, nor should they be left carrying the burden of it alone,” Cllr Reddy said.
Citing the work of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Cllr Reddy explained that violence has long been determined a public health issue due its devastating impact on physical and mental health. This means that it requires proactive prevention rather than purely reactive law enforcement.
“Violence does not appear in isolation. It spreads. People exposed to violence are more likely to experience it again, become caught up in it, or see it as normalised around them. Exposure changes how people think about safety, retaliation and survival,” he said.
“In that sense, violence behaves much like a contagious process, and if the State only responds after serious harm has already happened, then we are constantly reacting instead of preventing. When the response is justice alone, we do not interrupt and prevent future violence.”
Cllr Reddy said communities like Ballymun have experienced violence for far too long while “lack sustained investment in prevention.” He is calling for a “healing and evidence-based” approach to address communities who have been expected “to absorb trauma without the structures needed to interrupt the cycles that cause that harm”.
“Thankfully, we now have emerging examples here in Ireland, such as the work in the Canal Communities , where people are actively building community-based public safety approaches grounded in public health principles and group violence intervention,” he said.
“This work is not only about increasing safety for the wider community, but about making real efforts to save lives, prevent retaliation, reduce harm and support people before violence escalates. Ballymun and other areas with resources could be working with other pilots to implement similar strategies.”
“We see, through international work, that credibility matters. The people best placed to interrupt violence are often those who understand it closely, who have relationships in the community, and who can engage people in ways systems alone often cannot. That is why investment in training and employing local people as violence intervention workers is so important. Communities need skilled people who are trusted, visible and able to intervene early before situations escalate further."
Cllr Reddy is calling for “political leadership, long-term investment, joined-up thinking across services”. He said there is a need for workers who are properly trained in violence intervention and who can engage directly with those most affected by it.
“Most people’s first experience of violence is not as someone causing harm, but as someone living with fear, witnessing trauma, or losing people around them. Prevention is not soft on violence. Prevention is how we stop more victims, more trauma and more lives being lost.
“To summarise work from Gary Slutkin, MD, formally with the WHO and author of The End of Violence’, “Research from public health approaches to violence has consistently shown that violence spreads through exposure."
One of the clearest predictors of future violence is a previous act of violence says Cllr Reddy. As violence clusters within communities, he explained this leads to cycles of "retaliation, fear, and harm”. “But if violence follows patterns, then it can also be interrupted. This is why early intervention, trusted relationships and credible community-based responses are so important,” he said.
“Communities need support not only after violence has happened, but before situations escalate further. Communities deserve more than survival. They deserve the chance to heal, feel safe and flourish.”
This content is funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme