LOTTERIES AND OTHER HOLD-UPS . From 'New Hibernia' magazine , April 1987. No , no regrets . Nor none belonging to me . No anniversaries .
Ireland has had more than her fair share of the past . No expecting her to think of the future . Let her catch up with the present . Happenings , not dates , are important in life .
Whenever anybody asked Aunt Molly to buy
a Sweepstakes ticket , she'd cluck her tongue and look reproachfully at Uncle Jack , or in his general direction . Mention some fella like the adenoidal compere ,
Bart Bastable , or tell a story about a winning ticket being flogged by
Lucky Coady's , and me poor uncle's name was taken in vain . Lost mass , he did . Always lost mass . Uncle Jack must have lost more mass than
Martin Luther! Aunt Molly used to say
- " Don't talk to me about your Uncle Jack ! He's as useful as a hole in a bucket . He'd take a sieve to a well . Like Larry McHale's dog he'd walk a step of the road with anyone . And he never meets anybody but beggars . If he went out with a gypsy he'd come back with a tinker . Never knew anybody but dossers and tramps . 'Molly' , he'd say to me , ' I was in a fella's company tonight and honest to God , how he's not on the stage ! Such gas ! You'd have paid to hear him . An honour to buy him a drink .' " And of course Uncle Jack did . Buy the drink , that is
....... (MORE LATER).
THE HEAVY HAND OF THE LAW .......Allegations of Garda brutality only hit the headlines intermittently . But the problem may be much more widespread than most people imagine . Last year out-of-court settlements of cases involving members of the Garda cost the taxpayer over €1 million . What's going on ? From 'MAGILL' magazine , April 2003 . By Mairead Carey. Dublin North-Central competes for its place at the top of the complaints league with
Dublin South Central , which includes
Pearse Street , Kevin Street and Donnybrook Garda Stations . Until this year
(ie 2003) the Garda Complaints Board compiled statistics to show complaints per head of population . The two
Dublin central divisions
'won' hands down ! In 2000 ,
Dublin North Central had
27.6 complaints per 10,000 people compared to 1.5 in Waterford/Kilkenny . Less than one per cent of all complaints to
the Garda Complaints Board , according to its last report , resulted in a
criminal prosecution , although the figures will show an increase this year as a result of
the May Day riots: seven gardai are facing charges as a result of clashes with protesters . In
2001 , almost 200 complaints were passed on to the (State) Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) but because of delays in processing the complaints
the vast majority were never acted upon . Summary prosecutions must commence within six months of the date of the offence . Even
the Garda Complaints Board itself admits that increasingly it is failing to provide completed investigation files to
the DPP within the time limit . In its latest report it acknowledged that
"...in these circumstances the right of the DPP to consider whether a member of the Garda Siochana should be prosecuted arising from a complaint has effectively been removed . The situation cannot be regarded as satisfactory....... " (MORE LATER).
THE STRANGE STATE KILLING OF MAURICE O'NEILL ....... James Gogartys Tribunal reminiscences about the shooting dead of a Garda colleague have resurrected a long-lost story of justice miscarried .From 'MAGILL' magazine , March 1999 . By ANTON McCABE . Harry White dived through a window into the night and shot his way through a garda cordon : hit twice in the leg , he collapsed in a clump of whins half-a-mile from the house . For two cold October nights he lay wounded under the stars .
(Free State) Soldiers scoured the area ; a sympathrtic soldier found him , fed him , got him to shelter and finally escorted him by bicycle to
Dublin . It was
October 1946 before
Harry White was finally captured on a lonely mountain farm on the Derry side of the Sperrins . Four days later , he was 'released' from
Crumlin Road Jail , bundled into an RUC car and driven to a bridge on the Armagh-Monaghan road : a Garda car stopped on the other side , and he was bundled across the border without the slightest pretence of judicial process . Six weeks later , at
the Special Criminal Court in Dublin , he was sentenced to death . Sean McBride was defence counsel . Under cross-examination , a detective admitted he and his companions
had fired on three men in the passageway . Of thirty to forty bullets fired in the lane , only two were ever produced - neither of those was the bullet that
killed State Detective Mordaunt . Instead , a pathologist claimed that the hole in
Mordaunt's skull was too small to have been made by a shot from any of the Gardai's
.45 revolvers , despite the fact there was evidence some had weapons of smaller calibre . Evidence was produced that Garda fire had hit targets well away from the lane....... (MORE LATER).
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