max power
12/01/2004, 2:23 PM
It's July 2014 - and John Gilligan emerges from behind the open gates of 'Mosney Open Prison For Drug Dealers And Former TDs'. Awaiting the now 68-year-old drug baron after two decades behind bars is the Ireland of the future.
Smoking has been banned for almost 10 years following the Great Pub Wars of 2004 - when barmen, punters and Gardai (supported by Special Branch and the military) fought pitched battles outside hostelries throughout the land.
Drinking alcohol in a public house has also been outlawed - along with cursing and talking to members of the opposite sex to whom you are not legally married.
As Gilligan goes in search of his first pint in years, he can only find bars full of miserable punters, slumped over de-caff Guinness Light underneath big portraits of Micky "Big Brother" McDowell.
The trip back into Dublin City Centre is made difficult by ongoing LUAS works and the four mile long collapsed trench that once was the Dublin Port Tunnel. But Transport Minister Seamus Brennan Jnr is still vowing to "finish the work his dad started".
Cigarettes may have been outlawed years ago but cannabis is now fully legalised - so long as you don't mix it with evil tobacco. A new generation of drug lords have reacted accordingly - and the
street value of smuggled 'Nicorette' patches has soared well past the €70 mark.
An Taoiseach Ronan Keating, TD, has promised to stamp out the menace of nicotine addiction - just as soon as Gardai and the Irish Defence Forces (all 75 of them - the rest are on peacekeeping duties in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Burma, Kashmir and North Korea) sort out the ongoing gangland feuds that have led the FSE (Federal States of Europe) to officially mark Limerick as a "severe calamity zone".
As a bemused John Gilligan gazes at the ruins of the G.P.O - virtually flattened when the Spike fell over for the fourth time in March 2009 - he reflects on an Ireland that has changed, changed utterly. He grabs a passing newsboy and asks the one question that was troubling him most in his years of isolation:
"...C'mere kid! Has Dublin won the All Ireland yet?..."
Smoking has been banned for almost 10 years following the Great Pub Wars of 2004 - when barmen, punters and Gardai (supported by Special Branch and the military) fought pitched battles outside hostelries throughout the land.
Drinking alcohol in a public house has also been outlawed - along with cursing and talking to members of the opposite sex to whom you are not legally married.
As Gilligan goes in search of his first pint in years, he can only find bars full of miserable punters, slumped over de-caff Guinness Light underneath big portraits of Micky "Big Brother" McDowell.
The trip back into Dublin City Centre is made difficult by ongoing LUAS works and the four mile long collapsed trench that once was the Dublin Port Tunnel. But Transport Minister Seamus Brennan Jnr is still vowing to "finish the work his dad started".
Cigarettes may have been outlawed years ago but cannabis is now fully legalised - so long as you don't mix it with evil tobacco. A new generation of drug lords have reacted accordingly - and the
street value of smuggled 'Nicorette' patches has soared well past the €70 mark.
An Taoiseach Ronan Keating, TD, has promised to stamp out the menace of nicotine addiction - just as soon as Gardai and the Irish Defence Forces (all 75 of them - the rest are on peacekeeping duties in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Burma, Kashmir and North Korea) sort out the ongoing gangland feuds that have led the FSE (Federal States of Europe) to officially mark Limerick as a "severe calamity zone".
As a bemused John Gilligan gazes at the ruins of the G.P.O - virtually flattened when the Spike fell over for the fourth time in March 2009 - he reflects on an Ireland that has changed, changed utterly. He grabs a passing newsboy and asks the one question that was troubling him most in his years of isolation:
"...C'mere kid! Has Dublin won the All Ireland yet?..."