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‘Sue Denham’ makes a valid point about how YouTube.ie, the YouTube Ireland portal, has been looking rather O’Irish since it was launched recently.

However, the pseudonym column in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times makes no reference to how the newspaper’s online Irish section is looking these days, rather empty that is (as pictured above).

As we’ve said before the Ireland section has been offline since the relaunch of timesonline.co.uk, it’s not often a week goes by where somebody questions where it has gone to, or will it be coming back.

As the World Health Organisation classes Ireland as the least violent country in Europe the church classes the violence levels as "close to a national emergency" according to the Irish Times.

While it might be wrong that anybody is being killed or murdered, the facts simply don’t back that there is any kind of crisis. Crime in the country is low per head of population, and there is no trend of alarming growth.

On the eve of the release of a WHO report that shows Ireland to be least violent state in Europe, the media and "leaders in society" are continuing to peddle outright twisted view that violence in the country is spiraling out of control, it simply isn’t.

In the Sunday Times yesterday a news report started with the view that the WHO report "seems to fly in the face of reality", the reality it seems is that the political and media hype flies in the face of reality and hard facts.

Challenging the idea that the level of violence is out of control is akin to challenging an urban myth that just won’t go away. Close to everybody is sucked into the myth and the fear, and the fear is irrational and near to unchallengeable.      

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