Patrick O'Connell

They had been, you know...

It's not an easy thing to take down a grouping like that.

You saw the amount of effort that had to go into doing it down in Limerick, where huge resources had been drafted to confront the gangs that were going on down there.

soon after what happened to Barrymore happened, the guards went in.

Like it was one of the rare occasions that I can remember where the actual raids, there was video taken of them and that was put out subsequently by the Gardaí.

I mean, they went in, they went in heavy, they took these guys out of the community, locked them up.

Like as we've seen, every effort was made to prosecute them for what they had done.

I mean, the case was dealt with in the special criminal court, which shows you, you know, the manner in which the state was dealing with this.

So.

Yeah, I think it's an extremely difficult job.

Very difficult job.

Like the guys who do that, you know, like, you know, hats off to them.

It really is a job that maybe, you know, doesn't get the recognition it deserves from the point of view.

These guys go in every morning, they're spending their days behind bars with, you know, a range of people who have been put there primarily to keep the community at large safe.

And that's one of the things that was said about this incident with Sean Powell, that there was no warning that something like this was going to happen.

There was no sense that he was building up to do something.

It was completely unexpected and just went from 0 to 90 inside the cell.

But obviously he had been planning it.