CITY TRIBUNE
Racist jailed for verbal attack
By Ann Healy
A video clip which shows a 47-year-old man being racially abusive and insulting towards a young black woman on the NUIG campus, has racked up 1.4 million views on Twitter since it was uploaded to social media on the day of the encounter.
The victim told Galway District Court this week that she was hurt by the racially-motivated incident as she considered herself Irish, having been born and raised in this country.
Oliver Taheny, 100 An Reilean, Roscam, was sentenced to three months in prison at Galway District Court this week for engaging in threatening, abusive and insulting words or behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace or being reckless as to whether a breach of the peace might have been occasioned, at NUIG, Newcastle, Galway, on August 12, 2020.
He had denied the charge. He also denied a separate charge of being intoxicated in a public place at Millplot, Oranmore, on June 24, 2002, but he did plead guilty to a similar charge of being intoxicated in public at Dominick Street, Galway, on November 21, 2020.
The young woman gave evidence she was walking with a friend along a footpath when a man, who was walking in the opposite direction on an adjacent footpath, started screaming racial slurs at her.
She said that by the third time he said the slurs, she started recording everything he said on her phone. There had been no interaction between them beforehand, she said.
The girl said she went to the Garda station in Cork three days later, gave a statement and showed Gardaí the video.
Defence counsel, Keith Concannon, told the woman his client wanted to offer a sincere apology to her for his choice of language on the day. He noted her friend who had been with her, had declined to make a statement as did a male cyclist, who had witnessed the incident.
The woman said her friend did not want to get involved and she did not know the cyclist, who just happened to be passing by at the time.
Mr Concannon said it was 5.45pm and the incident occurred on the walkway down by the river. He said Taheny had been sitting on a rock drinking a can of Guinness.
The woman disagreed. She said she and her friend were walking on one footpath and Taheny was walking in the opposite direction on another footpath.
She denied a suggestion there had been an interaction between them before he started shouting racial slurs at her.
Mr Concannon said his client would say she had called him a “drunken Paddy” when she saw him drinking while sitting on the rock.
“His assertion that you called him ‘a drunk Paddy’ also has racial connotations. You would accept Galway is a multi-cultural city and he was not just waiting around to racially abuse someone,” Mr Concannon put to the witness.
He asked her if there was any particular reason why she had started recording the incident.
“For my own safety. I’m a woman and I started recording him,” she said.
Mr Concannon said she had uploaded the video to social media and it had hundreds of thousands of views since that day.
He then asked why she had waited three days to go to the Gardaí.
She said she had discussed it with her parents and they had pushed her to make a complaint which she did in Cork.
The video was then shown to the court.
It showed Taheny walking past the victim, calling her a “f**kin’ n***** on several occasions. He also shouts: “Go back to your own country”.
The woman can be heard asking Taheny on several occasions: “What are you saying?” and on each occasion he replied with slurs. The woman can be heard telling him she was born in Ireland, but he continues to use the ’N’ word and shout at her to go back to her own country, before walking off.
Garda Owen O’Donnell gave evidence he was initially informed by security staff at NUIG about the incident and was later contacted by Gardaí in Cork.
The video, he said, had gone online where it had gathered a lot of media attention.
He said he received a statement of complaint on August 20, which the woman had made to his colleagues in Cork on August 15.
He said he identified Taheny, whom he already knew, from the video clip which the woman gave him.
Garda O’Donnell took a statement from Taheny the following November which read: “On August 12, 2020, I was at NUIG, sitting on a rock on the riverbank drinking cans of Guinness. Two black people came along and called me a drunken Paddy and I said, if I was a Paddy, she was a n*****. I didn’t know she was recording it. My friend had died and I was thinking of other things. I apologise for using profanities.”
Garda O’Donnell explained the DPP had directed Taheny be prosecuted for breaching the peace.
In his submissions to the court, Mr Concannon said he was not trying to excuse the type of language Taheny used, but he was trying to explain his behaviour.
“He feels he is being wronged. I have impressed on him the grim view the court takes on that, but he feels aggrieved and has done so for a long time. He is making strides to improve his life. This is a rather regrettable set of circumstances,” counsel said.
Judge Fahy agreed it was regrettable, but the evidence presented to the court was incontrovertible.
Convicting Taheny of breaching the peace, Judge Fahy said she had not heard of the video being circulated on social media as she did not use social media “because of her job” and she was basing her judgement solely on the evidence before the court.
Mr Concannon said his client had already been convicted “in the court of public opinion”.
Judge Fahy said that had nothing to do with her court.
She then asked the victim if the incident had adversely affected her in any way.
“I kind of felt like I wasn’t Irish, even though I was born and raised here and involved in the culture. I was hurt,” the woman said.
Judge Fahy said Taheny was saying he was sorry, but he was also saying the woman said something to him and she asked the woman if she accepted that.
“I accept his apology, but that was not what happened,” the woman said, denying she had said anything to Taheny before he started to racially abuse her.
Inspector Finbarr Philpott, prosecuting, said Taheny had 68 previous convictions, including 19 for breaching the peace, 24 for being intoxicated in public, three for thefts, seven for failing to appear in court and others for obstructing Gardaí.
Judge Fahy sentenced Taheny to three months in prison, and also fined him €100 for each of the intoxicated in public charges and granted leave to appeal.
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.
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
