Veronica’s death still haunts us

LAST Friday marked the 19th anniversary of the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin, callously shot dead in her car while stopped at traffic lights on the Naas Road on June 26, 1996.

It may be stretching it to describe it as a

‘JFK moment’ but for those in my profession it was nothing less than that.

I was with a group of journalists in Dublin Airport, en route to Brussels on a press trip, when news of Veronica’s death broke. Some of them had known her personally and were understandably devastated to learn of the brutal murder of a colleague.

Much has been written about the impact of Veronica Guerin’s killing in the intervening two decades. There have been countless articles, numerous books and no less than two big screen movie versions of the fearless reporter’s life and death.

In the face of widespread public revulsion, politicians were forced to up their game in the State’s war against criminality, using new tools like the Criminal Assets Bureau to bring the gangster underworld to heel – with some notable results.

The despised criminal John Gilligan, who was linked to her killing but acquitted in court, must now know something of the fear that Veronica felt in those final moments, having himself been at the receiving end of an assassination attempt.

Not that Veronica would have taken any joy in this – the attack on Gilligan only served to prove that the threat posed to society by drug gangs was as prevalent as ever.

Today, feuding between rival criminals still results in violence and death – sometimes at the expense of innocent victims. It continues to present the authorities with their biggest challenge since

‘The Troubles’.

Journalism remains a high-risk profession, both at home and abroad. But since Veronica’s death, there is less complacency within the profession.

In this country, many threats to press freedom exist, with media outlets regularly forced to run the gauntlet of career-shattering libel actions. But no threat is greater than that faced by Veronica Guerin on that sunny June afternoon in 1996.

We are still haunted by it.