CONTRACT killers have been offered thousands of euro by members of a traveller clan locked in a lethal feud in the west of Ireland.
Notorious gangsters linked to Fat John McCarthy's gang based in Moyross, Limerick, have been drafted in by members of the Mayo-based Collins clan, according to sources.
Cash was put on the table in a bid to force members of the 'Diesel' Maughan family to back down from their bitter feud with the Collins side.
The row escalated this week after a member of the Maughan family was shot and wounded in Castlebar,Co Mayo on Thursday night. In January, another relation, Jack Maughan, was shot and wounded in a drive-by shooting at a filling station in the town.
Attack
Sources say, however,that the Limerick thugs had nothing to do with the latest gun attack on the man in his 30s, who suffered a stomach wound. "It looks like some-one got fed up waiting and decided to take it on themselves," said a Sunday World source.
Gardai made an appeal for witnesses to the gun attack at 8.30pm last Thursday at a house in Castlebar's Castlegrove Estate.
The victim was hit after a number of shots were fired at the house before the attackers made their getaway in a bronze-coloured Audi. Last January, 21-year-old Jack Maughan was shot twice in a drive-by attack at a service station in the town as he got back into his Ford Transit van.
A gunman opened fire with what is thought to have been a pellet gun from a black car that pulled up alongside him. The young man suffered wounds to his back and was later treated at Mayo General Hospital. There is no suggestion that either of the wounded men are involved in the dangerous feud which flared up last summer.
Last year, a senior member of the Collins clan was hit with a tax demand for £1 million after an investigation by the Criminal Assets Bureau.
It came after a series of raids carried out by CAB officers in November 2010, when £100,000 in cash and luxury goods were seized at properties in Ballina.
