The forecourt of Frank Hogan's car dealership on the Dublin Road in Limerick is a testament to the burgeoning economic growth of the west of Ireland. It is packed full of gleaming German automotive luxury.

On Wednesday morning, prospective customers were test- driving Audi's new A5 sports coupe, a car that will leave buyers with little or no change out of €100,000.

Yet, only a couple of miles away, on the far side of town, you could buy two perfectly good houses for the same price in the deeply troubled streets of Moyross, or even less if you try the O'Malley Park area in the south of the city.

In certain parts of these areas, you might be able to pick up an entire street for a hundred grand.

That's if you don't mind living in a war zone. While the gleaming metallic A5 was attracting admiring glances on the Dublin Road, the effect of unfamiliar motor cars on children a couple of miles away in Moyross is an entirely different affair.

At mid-morning on Wednesday, a boy of four or five years of age bolted in terror when my car pulled into an otherwise empty cul-de-sac off Pineview Gardens in Moyross.

The child showed no curiosity, simply fleeing in terror, dis-appearing down the alleyway to the back of a house.

He was in fear of being shot at.

Around Delmage, Pine View and Castle Park in Moyross, children are now accustomed to the arrival of strange cars being accompanied by screamed threats, gunfire and arson attacks.

Last Sunday night, a few streets away in Ballynanty, a young mother had to throw her infant child from a bedroom window to a neighbour after youths had attacked her house and set it on fire with petrol bombs. She had no involvement whatever in crime or drugs, trying her best to rear two children and keep them from harm.

The attack barely merited any mention beyond the local press.

The only 'national' news from Limerick last weekend was about the shots fired at a Garda squad car across town in Southill. That precipitated one of the biggest Garda operations in the city for years, with over 70 officers raiding houses in the O'Malley Park area and its environs, where they recovered a rifle and three handguns.

Unfortunately, the horrific arson attack on the young woman's home, and her desperate action in having to drop her young son into the arms of a neighbour, is not, in the way of things, a news event.

If the family had perished in the fire, it would have been.

There would have been outrage and public hand-wringing, the way there was last September when a four-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister were almost burned to death when their mother's car was firebombed in Pineview Gardens -- an event that might explain why that little boy fled in terror on Wednesday morning.

He would be aware of the fate of those other two little children. He might even have witnessed what happened.

The violence that is going on in Moyross at present is not the 'feuding' to which almost all violence in Limerick is generally ascribed. It is a kind of low-key community cleansing being carried out by a gang of youths with links to the current dominant crime gang in the area.

The 'feuding' in this part of Moyross ended last April with the murder of local man, Noel Campion, 35, from Pineview Gardens who was gunned down in the city centre while on his way to court to face motoring offences.

Campion had been engaged in a feud with the 'Dundon-McCarthy' gang, a feud which has had various permutations over the past decade when one big local gang, led by members of the Ryan family, split into rival factions.

What has been happening in Moyross since earlier this year has been a concerted attempt by the Dundon-McCarthy faction to rid the area of all remaining families in any way related to their former opponents.

The gang leaders have, effectively, handed that job over to the young teenagers they also use to sell drugs around the area.

With the absence of any adult male opponents these out-of-controlled teenagers are targeting women and children, attacking them on the streets and petrol-bombing their homes. Up to recently, these were nocturnal activities.

Local people say that nowadays they make no attempt to hide their actions and carry out attacks at any time of the day.

One local woman who decided to speak out, seeking anonymity and wanting to be known only as 'Joan', phoned Newstalk's breakfast slot with Claire Byrne and Ger Gilroy last Monday.

Speaking to the Sunday Independent later in the week, 'Joan' said she decided to seek public attention simply because she fears that within the coming days or weeks women or children are going to be murdered.

A relative of Noel Campion, she said the Government, Garda and City Council have abandoned the people of Moyross to their fate.

She was prompted to risk going public, she said, because within a relatively short time there will be nowhere for people like her to live in the part of Moyross she has called home for almost 30 years.

She said there is now no one willingly staying in area which was formerly a tight-knit, caring community. "There is a lovely country woman here. She loved it, loved the whole community thing.

"I said to her years ago what would she do if she won the Lotto and she said she would never move. I spoke to her the other day and she said she would go tomorrow if she could get out.

"Everyone is terrified. The children are terrified. That's why they run from cars. Three weeks ago they fired into [the home of a young single woman with three young children]. They were only saved because they shot up the car in the drive first.

"They fired into the living room where the children had been sitting on the sofa. That sofa was riddled. If they hadn't had time to dive for cover, they would be dead. She's gone now and the house burned.

"There is no feud here. It takes two sides for a feud and there is only one crowd. They are gathering up all these young fellas and putting them up to it. They are driving around, calling women scumbags and rats, saying they will burn them out and shoot them."

'Joan' said the gang was recruit-ing any young man who would do their bidding, particularly if it involved violence. She said one 17-year-old had recently been recruited into the gang and was now an experienced gunman.

"His father is a drunk who never worked. The [father's] girlfriend is a drunk and she has her own child. He [the youth] is walking about with his chest out. The first time they gave him a gun, he couldn't handle it and fired into the wrong house. There was a woman and child in the house that had nothing to do with anything. The next time he got it right. He is an expert with a gun. He has shot up three houses.

"It was beautiful here. We have a neighbour here who is 60 and helped to build the shrine [the Marian shrine in Delage Park which remains intact, despite all the destruction around it]. The children played soccer in the streets. It was safe. Everyone knew each other and everyone got along. Now, they are roaring around in cars screaming at you. We are on tenterhooks all the time. The children, if they see a strange car bolt behind our houses.

"They [the gangs] have evicted more people than the City Council has in 10 years. They [the council] come the next day and board the houses up, even with food still on the table. The rats are terrible. [One local man] caught nine rats in one trap in a day. I rang the council.

"Anyone who has any connection to the late Noel Campion, even girls that did baby-sitting, they are attacked. This is a no-go area," she said.

She claimed policing was not working, saying she regularly calls the Garda and that, even where people are brave enough to give evidence, the culprits are almost immediately released on bail.

She said that after one woman reported a teenage gang member who had publicly threatened to kill her, the youth was arrested and charged, only to get bail and appear the next day to repeat the same threat. He was arrested and charged a second time and received bail again. He immediately repeated the threat so the young woman left with her children.

"The gardai say that the judges are too soft and give them bail no matter what they say. But I have been in court and they never oppose bail," Joan said.

She was scathing of both Government and the Garda.

She said that when the Taoiseach visited Moyross last October, he was kept away from the violence-scarred area and shown only the "respectable" end of the estate at the Cosgrave Park entrance where there is a brand-new community centre and Supervalu store. At this end of the estate, Moyross seems like any other respectable working-class estate in Ireland.

The destroyed houses, litter and rubble-strewn streets are towards the back of the estate, out of view of the passing public. Similarly, the devastation of O'Malley Park is largely hidden from public view in the little conclave of rubbish-strewn streets behind the Galvone Road industrial estate.

A recent report, commissioned by Limerick City Council, backs up almost everything 'Joan' has to say about the plight of people living in areas like Moyross and O'Malley Park. The report, by former Dublin City manager John Fitzgerald, underlines what she has to say about the destruction of her neighbourhood. Both the report and 'Joan' agree that the immediate problem is one of criminality and that this has to be dealt with before any other remedial action can take place.

Mr Fitzgerald, who presented his report to Government in April, says that at least 100 full-time gardai need to be dedicated to the main problem areas in Moyross and Southill. Both agree on the fact that children are being recruited by gangs -- as the criminals know that 'children' aged 17 or under are virtually immune to imprisonment, mainly because there are almost no detention places for young offenders.

Mr Fitzgerald points out that these areas have some of the worst educational records in the country. In 10 years, the number of primary school places has dropped 75 per cent and truancy levels are the highest in the country.

The stigma of having Southill or Moyross as an address is also a cause of discrimination by employers and there are extraordinarily high levels of unemployment at a time when Limerick is undergoing an economic boom. 'Joan' said that when she recently enrolled her daughter for tuition classes in Irish, the tutor handed her money back and refused the girl lessons when she read her address.

On a broader front, the activities of the gangs is damaging to the image of Limerick city.

It also has a deadening effect on businesses in the city centre, partic-ularly shops. Limerick is the only city in Ireland where retail rental levels in the town centre are below those of out-of-town shopping centres which people choose in preference to going into the centre.

Primarily, Mr Fitzgerald insists there needs to be an intense period of police intervention.

"I am convinced," he says, "that dedicated police resources to support a sustained and intensive policing intervention need to be made available to fundamentally change the dynamics of the current situation. In addition to intensively targeting the relatively small number of individuals engaged in serious criminal activity, there needs to be a highly visible Garda presence at all times in these estates in order to restore confidence and stability in the communities.

"This will involve a policing structure, headed by a superintendent, with appropriate management structures, whose sole function will be the policing of these areas," Commissioner Fitzgerald said.

The report has, so far, done little to create any improvement in confidence.

There have been other reports and other promises. The people of Moyross, desperate for any form of intervention, are turning to God.

The establishment of a small mission by the Franciscan Order, in one of the worst parts of the estate at Delmage Park, has instilled some kind of hope. Over 500 people attended a Mass celebrated by the Bishop of Limerick, Dr Donal Murray, at the local Corpus Christi Church last Saturday to mark the setting up of the mission.

The congregation erupted into sustained applause when Brother Shawn O'Connor, local servant superior in the mission, assured the congregation that he and his team intended to stay and help as long as they were needed.