TO MOST serving Gardai, the names Eddie Fitzmaurice and Ronan MacLochlainn either mean absolutely nothing,or are at best are vaguely familiar.

However, they are names that should be foremost in their minds as they face into the prospect of, once again,going on strike and leaving the country almost totally defenceless.

Darkest

Make no mistake about it, what is being bandied about and contemplated is an actual strike,although those who take an active part in it will still receive their wages for that same day.

When asked, after 39 years in An Garda Siochana, what my darkest day on the job was, I respond by saying that participation, however involuntary, in the Blue Flu of May 1, 1998, was that day. Peer pressure, and nothing else, drove myself and over 90 per cent of the force to ring in 'sick' that morning.

Eddie Fitzmaurice, a widower in his eighties, was last seen alive as he locked up his drapery shop at Bellaghy, Charlestown, at 8pm on Blue Flu Friday, May 1, 1998.

Over the next few days, customers, friends and associates noticed that the shop had not been reopened. Alerted by a family member, Gardai forced entry to Eddie's
living quarters above the shop on May 6, some five days later.

They found his semi-nude body in the front bedroom of the house. He was bound and gagged. His body bore the signs of a beating.
It would later be estimated that it could have taken the frail pensioner three days to crawl from the back bedroom where he had been assaulted to the front room where he tried to alert passers-by.

Years later, I was the sergeant in charge of the Garda Cold Case Unit who undertook a review of that unsolved homicide.
Person after person we spoke too recalled, some 12 years later, how on that same night they had locked themselves into their homes as van-loads of thugs roamed freely up and down the streets of our cities and towns.

Subversive

Ronan MacLochlainn, a native of Ballymun, Dublin, and a member of a subversive organisation, would be shot dead in a shoot-out between members of the Garda Emergency
Response Unit and a six-strong,heavily-armed gang they intercepted attempting to rob a cash-in-transit security van on the main Dublin to Wexford Road just outside

Ashford in County Wicklow on that same Blue Flu Friday.
The loss of any life is regrettable,but I for one could never have forgiven myself if it had been a Garda who was shot because he had no back-up as his colleagues were off 'sick'.

Permission had to be actually sought in advance from the Association to allow those Gardai involved in the shoot-out to work on that particular day.

Throughout that long day of May 1, 1998, the country was put in fear as the vast majority of Gardai withdrew services. We were left unprotected except for those members of Sergeant and Inspector rank whose representatives had not recognised the strike.

Over the last few weeks, we have wit-nessed the cold- blooded murder of one of our colleagues, Adrian Donohoe, who was gunned down by a gang of armed thugs.

Throughout my service, I had attended the funerals of six colleagues gunned down in the service of our society. An Garda Siochana is a very small family and four of those who gave their lives were known to me.
However, I have never witnessed such outpourings of support among the public for Gardai as that which followed the most recent murder.
We have also witnessed the closure of almost 100 rural Garda Stations in recent weeks.

Pride

It has been a source of pride to me to watch community groups calling for these stations to be reopened. The praise for both the sense of security and high standard of service that people felt from a local Garda presnee was over-whelming.

The Blue Flu of May 1998 did a lot of damage to the public's perception of the Gardai. In a single day,years of loyal service, of dedication and of sacrifice, were swept aside as Gardai left vulnerable people alone and without protection.

The damage that this action did is only now fading. The support and encouragement received over the last few weeks is evidence of this.
However, here we go, once again allowing a faction in An Garda Siochana to push all its members to the brink of industrial action.

I can appreciate that it is difficult to stand aside and watch the erosion of hard-earned allowances. It is equally as hard to accept what is being done to our pension, a pension fund that I contributed too over 39 years.

I have, however, news for my former colleagues and their representatives, some of whom occupied the same positions in that body at the last Blue Flu, that, to many in our society, the Gardai and, indeed the Civil Service as a whole, are not too badly paid at all.

Since retiring, I have been working in a drop-in facility in Dublin's city centre where we feed an average of 500 homeless and marginalised people six days a week.
To those people the pay and conditions enjoyed by the Civil Service looks very, very attractive indeed.
I would appeal to all my former colleagues to step back and not to make the same mistake we did.

Don't let yourselves be led or pushed down a road that, I honestly believe, 99 per cent of you never want to tread.