Our country is in mourning after the pointless and unnecessary deaths of helpless pedestrians on Irish roads. Sister Stanislaus Kennedy mentions but a handful of those killed, but it is sufficient enough a number to shock us into realisation. The general consensus is to imprison the guilty motorists and to discard of the key, and while the writer admits that this is a valid punishment in the opinion of many, she is adamant that it is not a remedy. It is merely a temporary answer, and in no way could this action stop such accidents reoccurring. The threat of a possible prison sentence will not dissuade a potential joy rider to drop the keys of a car. Consider the deceased, whose lives have been prematurely ended due to reasons beyond their control, and their families who are left heartbroken in their wake. Imprisoning the perpetrators who caused this inexplicable grief cannot turn back the clock or fix anything. To have robbed someone of their life is big enough a shock to any driver, and an offence they are unlikely to repeat. Their lives, too, have been indelibly altered.
Kennedy suggests that poverty and inadequate care facilities for children are underlying causes of this violence. The poverty gap is, and has been, widening considerably, and as a direct result of this, violence is becoming more prevalent because children who are not being sufficiently cared for in their own homes have nowhere to turn but to violence. The writer insists that the parents are not responsible for two reasons; the wayward children are immune to parental powers and also, those parents concerned that their children were not receiving proper care may have attempted to locate a place of care for their children, but failed to do so due to a lack of such facilities. She also says that the blame should not be attributed to the children either. The only way, she sees, is to hit the nail on the head, so to speak, that is to provide assistance for the neediest of families to prevent their children from becoming violent or out of control.
