CITY TRIBUNE
Jail sentence for ‘dirty protest’ in Galway Garda Station
A man who claims a judge once called him a celebrity, smeared his own excrement over the walls of a cell at Mill Street Station after assaulting a Garda twice earlier that night.
49-year-old John Tomkins, of 136 Leargan, Knocknacarra will spend the next eight months in prison.
Tomkins asked Judge Mary Fahy to recuse herself from hearing the case against him at Galway District Court last week, claiming she would be biased against him.
“We have history going back a long time and I don’t feel I would get a fair hearing. I made comments to you in the past and you’d hold it against me,” Tomkins said.
Tomkins claimed the judge had once described him as a ‘celebrity’ and on another occasion called him ‘disgusting’ before admitting he had called her names too.
Refusing his request, Judge Fahy assured Tomkins that after 27 years “in the job”, she didn’t take things like that seriously.
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re biased against me. I walked into court years ago and you said ‘Here comes the celebrity’,” Tomkins claimed.
Judge Fahy said she had never called him a celebrity.
“He suffers from delusions if he thinks people are calling him a celebrity,” Judge Fahy said to Tomkins’ solicitor, Gearóid Geraghty.
Tomkins was before the court, charged with assaulting Garda Ciaran O’Malley at Lombard Street, on June 28 last year.
He was also charged with resisting arrest at Lombard Street and with assaulting Garda O’Malley again while under arrest at Galway Garda Station.
He was further charged with causing criminal damage to a cell at the Garda Station by smearing his own excrement all over the walls while being detained. He denied all of the charges.
Five Gardaí who witnessed Hopkins’ behaviour on the night were present in court to give evidence in the contested hearing.
Garda O’Malley said he was on foot patrol at 6.45pm on the evening in question when he saw Tomkins, whom he knew, drinking outside St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church. He said Tomkins became very aggressive when he approached him and directed him to pick up his rubbish and leave the area.
Tomkins refused and suddenly grabbed Garda O’Malley by the throat when he went to arrest him.
He ripped off the Garda’s tie in the ensuing struggle and both ended up on the ground where Tomkins managed to kick the Garda in the side of the head. A female Garda, who was present at the time, managed to subdue Tomkins with pepper spray. He remained aggressive on the way to the Garda station and again managed to assault Garda O’Malley by kicking him and punching him into the chest while he was being searched at the station.
During cross-examination, Mr Geraghty put it to Garda O’Malley that his client told him the Garda had been aggressive towards him.
“He said that you attacked him – those are my instructions you understand,” Mr Geraghty put to Garda O’Malley.
“He has the Garda Ombudsman to go to if he wants to make a complaint about me, but he hasn’t done so. My actions are beyond reproach,” Garda O’Malley said.
Tomkins poked Mr Geraghty in the back and following a brief consultation with the accused, Mr Geraghty informed the court that Tomkins wished to change his plea to guilty.
Inspector Des Beirne, prosecuting, then told the court that Tomkins was placed in a cell that night and when someone went to check on him, they found he had smeared excrement all over the walls of the cell.
The cell had to be deep cleaned at a cost of €486 and was “out of action” for 24 hours, the inspector said. There are toilets in each cell, he added.
Asking for leniency, Mr Geraghty said his client had spent a large portion of his adult life in prison and was the sole carer for his 80-year-old mother.
Judge Fahy said it must have been a very frightening experience for Garda O’Malley when his tie was pulled tight around his neck in the struggle and she asked him how was he doing now.
He assured her he was fine.
Insp Beirne confirmed Tomkins had 41 previous convictions for assaults, burglaries, obstruction of Gardai, thefts and Public Order offences going back many years.
Judge Fahy said the criminal damage to the Garda cell was a particularly nasty thing to do.
“I can’t comment for obvious reasons. It is what it is,” Mr Geraghty agreed.
Taking the last-minute plea into account, Judge Fahy sentenced Tomkins to five months in prison for the first assault on Garda O’Malley and imposed a consecutive three-month sentence for damaging the cell. She imposed a concurrent three-month sentence for the second assault and granted leave to appeal the sentences.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
The new Salmon Weir pedestrian and cycle bridge will be officially opened to the public next Friday, May 26.
Work on the €10 million bridge got underway in April 2022, before the main structure was hoisted into place in early December.
A lunchtime tape-cutting ceremony will take place on Friday, as the first pedestrians and cyclists traverse the as-yet-unnamed bridge.
The Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath, previously said the bridge, once opened, would remove existing conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and traffic “as well as facilitating the Cross-City Link public transport corridor over the existing 200-year-old bridge”.
The naming of the new bridge has been under discussion by the Council’s Civic Commemorations Committee since late last year.
One name that has been in the mix for some time is that of the first woman in Europe to graduate with an engineering degree – Alice Perry.
Ms Perry, who was from Wellpark, graduated from Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1906. The university’s engineering building is named in her honour.
The bridge was built by Jons Civil Engineering firm in County Meath and was assembled off-site before being transported to Galway. Funding for the project was provided in full by the National Transport Authority and the European Regional Development Fund.
(Photo: Sheila Gallagher captured the city’s new pedestrian footbridge being raised on the south side of the Salmon Weir Bridge in December. It will officially open next Friday, May 26).
From the Galway City Tribune – Minister of State for Local Government and Planning, Kieran O’Donnell was labelled a “disgrace” for overturning councillors’ decisions to rezone land in the new City Development Plan.
Minister O’Donnell (pictured) confirmed in a letter to Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath last week that he was reversing 25 material alternations made by councillors to the CDP 2023-29. He made the decision on the advice of Office of Planning Regulator (OPR).
Minister O’Donnell directed that 14 land parcels that were subject to land-use zoning changes by councillors as part of the Material Alterations to the Draft CDP should be reversed.
He directed that a further 11 land parcels in the city should become “unzoned”.
The Minister found that the CDP had not been made in a manner consistent with recommendations of the OPR, which required specific changes to the plan to ensure consistency with the national planning laws and guidelines.
At last week’s Council meeting Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG) asked for clarity on the process by which councillors could rezone the lands that had been changed by the Minister’s direction.
Cllr Declan McDonnell said, “What he [Minister O’Donnell] has done is an absolute disgrace”.
And he asked: “Do we have to have another development plan meeting to deal with it?”
Both Cllrs Hoare and McDonnell wondered what would become of the lands that were rezoned or unzoned by the ministerial direction.
Mr McGrath said the Council had put forward an argument in favour of retaining the material alterations in the plan, but ultimately the Minister sided with OPR.
He said if councillors want to make alterations to the new plan, they could go through the process of making a material alteration but this was lengthy.
The Save Roscam Peninsula campaign welcomed the Minister’s decision.
In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, it said the direction would mean the Roscam village area on the Roscam Peninsula will be unzoned and a number of land parcels would revert back to agriculture/high amenity.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “the material alterations made by city councillors following lobbying by developers continued the long-standing practice of councillors facilitating a developer-led plan rather than an evidence- and policy-based plan that meets the needs of the city.
“The Minister’s direction is an important step in restoring confidence in the planning system. It is clear from the City Council’s own evidence on future housing projections that there was no requirement to zone these lands for residential purposes in order to meet the needs of the targeted population increase up to 2029,” the spokesperson added.
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