Mullingar town's name in tatters after national paper's headline

Riots involving settled traveller families kicked off yet again over the weekend, the night before a damming report on the "plague" of drugs and gang violence in Mullingar appeared in the Sunday World.In the early hours of Saturday morning, Gardaí and members of the Mullingar Fire Brigade rushed to a house in Grange Crescent where a car parked in the driveway of the house had been set ablaze.Neighbours watched as the residents of the house were evacuated between 2.30 and 3am. Later that same day, in what is believed to be a retaliation attack, violence broke out along the streets in Grange Heights and Grange Meadows, where a number of men had gathered wielding weapons.Windows in both the upstairs and downstairs of houses were smashed, while in Ardilaun Green, a number of youths smashed the windows of a jeep and van that were parked in a driveway of a house.Gardaí were called to the scene at approximately 10.30pm, resulting in one man being arrested. A spokesperson for the Gardaí admitted all these incidents are feud related and that "tensions" in those areas are running "high" at the minute.In the past two years, Mullingar has been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons.The Sunday World story, under the heading "Our Drugs Plague" had a second headline saying: "Deals go down in broad daylight in country town".The story said that in Mullingar, vandalism and anti-social behaviour were rampant.It said of the Grange area: "The estate has seen nail bomb attacks, drug dealing in broad daylight, sexual attacks, intimidation, vandalism and anti-social behaviour."In summer 2008, estates on both sides of the town - Grange and D'Alton Park grabbed national headlines, when two all out violent melees broke out. According to the Sunday World report, they say residents living in these areas say they feel constantly under siege. Details were given of how every Monday morning a major clean-up operation takes place at the Grange community centre and creche as a result of drink and drugs, while the local astroturf and basketball court is known as the place where drug use and dealing is a regular occurrence.Newly elected Chairman of Westmeath County Council, Cllr. Mick Dollard said it was a very unfair representation of the town, and tool of national papers trying to sensationalise situations to sell papers:"First of all Mullingar is no better or no worse than any other town of its size in the country," said Cllr. Dollard. "There was no factual research done in that story. I think it's very unfair to people living in those areas. I'm on the ground all the time and it can be troublesome at times but community leaders and the Gardaí are trying to work together to create a positive image of Mullingar."Outgoing Town Council leader Ruth Illingworth also said that the article painted an unfair picture of Mullingar and argued that problems were no worse than any other Irish town."I do feel disappointed that this journalist decided to pick out Mullingar for a slating like this," she said. "Of course I am not saying that we don't have our problems but I suspect that those are no worse than anywhere else and we have so many positive things going on here that it's just a shame that we can't have those highlighted from time to time."I am not trying to gloss over problems either because I know that we do have problems with drugs and I despair to think that there may be areas in this town were people are afraid to walk around in or people are afraid to go into. I feel that what politicians can do is to make sure that we are tough on law and order and allow Gardaí to enforce that."