An emotional Mullingar mother asked if a child had to die before feuding in the town comes to an end during a special sitting of Mullingar District Court last week.

In what Judge David Anderson described as an "extraordinary" case, 20 extended members of one family were imprisoned for their part in a five minute attack on a family home in Mullingar.

The woman recounted the day a mob of up to 60 individuals armed with hatchets, pitchforks, slash hooks, baseball bats and stones attacked her home on September 24, 2007.

Bridget Myers spoke of her fear for her life and that of her family as the mob smashed all of the windows in the house and caused extensive damage to three cars parked outside the family home.

She told the court the group were intent on killing someone and were "going from one innocent family to another, burning and breaking."

Myers asked whether a child had to be killed before the fighting was ended. "Does red tape have to be put around a house and a child's dead body taken out?" she asked.

According to the woman, her 10-year-old daughter had not recovered from the attack and has yet to spend a night in her own bed. Her other children are frightened to go to school, she added.

While admitting she was ashamed to say it, many of the culprits are first and second cousins of hers, she told Judge Anderson.

Anderson said the normal people of Ireland would not tolerate such behavior in society. He imprisoned all but one of the 21 defendants in court and issued bench warrants for the arrest of three men who had failed to turn up for the court sitting.

The men have effectively been removed from Mullingar for the coming months as Anderson insisted that any appeal to the sentence would be subject to strict conditions, including an order excluding them from entering Mullingar.

-Westmeath Examiner