Fr Joe Young, a Limerick priest who has offered to mediate between feuding gangs in the city, has said that he is "very much aware of the risks involved".However, Fr Young, a chaplain with the Brothers of Charity in Bawnmore told ciNews that he "wasn't ordained as a priest to sit back".
"I'm no amateur when it comes to dealing with gang members," he said.
The priest spent 25 years working as a curate in Southill, understood to be the home of many of the warring gangs responsible for a spate of recent killings in the city.
And he said that the recent violence, which have claimed at least eight lives since 2000, was "totally unnecessary".
"Most of the killings are caused by paranoia," he added.
"I am opening my arms to all sides of the feud to meet me individually and privately and see where we can take it from there," said Fr Young. "There are moments in time when we have to take extraordinary measures to make sure we can make a difference."
Fr Young said that, during his time in Southill, the human suffering caused by the killings "left an indelible mark on me".
As a co-founder of Limerick group, Lost Futures, a support group for parents who have lost children to suicide and murder, he found that "trying to make sense of the loss of a child caused me great pain".
"There are no words which can describe the pain that's caused by the loss of a child," he continued.
Fr Young added that numerous parents around Southill had told him that they were scared even to have their children go for a walk in the area.
He said that he was angry about the neglect with which the area had been treated by successive Governments. "We're now paying for that neglect," Fr Young insisted.
In his work, he said that those who were destined to become violent criminals. Resources, which could have made a difference in keeping young people away from crime, were not put in, he said.
He added that he was confident that "if they (the gang members) met me, we could do something".
"I would look any criminal in the eye and ask them if they understood the pain they were causing their families."
Fr Young said that he would like to leave as his legacy "that life is precious".
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