A Fine Gael councillor carrying out voluntary work last year was accosted by a man who called him a \u201ctraitor\u201d and threatened him over his work in support of Ukraine, a District Court has heard.<\/p>\n
Cllr Alan Tobin, elected in Ashbourne for Meath County Council, said the incident made him think twice about continuing as a public representative.<\/p>\n
Ciaran Starrs (50), of Brindley Park Square, Ashbourne, was charged under the Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act with threatening to kill or maim Mr Tobin at Castle Street, Ashbourne, on May 4th, 2024. <\/p>\n
Sergeant Peter Clarke told the court Mr Tobin was replenishing plastic bags in dog bins when the defendant pulled up beside him in a vehicle and said: \u201cI\u2019ll do you now.\u201d Sgt Clarke said Mr Starrs called the politician a \u201ctraitor\u201d and threatened him over his support for Ukrainians.<\/p>\n
In court, Mr Tobin said the defendant produced a hammer and he had a \u201ccertain breed of dog\u201d in his vehicle. When an apology was offered in court Mr Tobin said he accepted it but \u201cthere should be a zero-tolerance approach to this\u201d. He said his wife heard about the altercation \u201cand shouldn\u2019t be subjected to this\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time a vehicle pulls up beside me now I get nervous,\u201d Mr Tobin said. He said a crime-prevention officer was in his house to make sure his house is secure. <\/p>\n
He has a young family and does not want to \u201cbring this type of thing on their heads\u201d. <\/p>\n
Mr Tobin said the incident made him think about whether he should continue as a public representative if this type of incident could happen again. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnybody involved in local community work shouldn\u2019t be open to this behaviour,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sgt Clarke said the defendant has seven previous convictions, the most recent of which was in 2008.<\/p>\n
Defence barrister James O\u2019Brien said his client admitted in Garda interviews that his behaviour was unacceptable. He made admissions during those interviews.<\/p>\n
Judge \u00c9irinn McKiernan said the allegation against the defendant is very serious and the offence has had a serious impact on Mr Tobin. A message has to go out that this sort of thing cannot happen and is totally unacceptable, she said. <\/p>\n
She directed Mr Starrs to make a \u20ac500 donation to Meath Women\u2019s Refuge. <\/p>\n
The court was told the defendant is not working at the moment. The case was adjourned to allow him pay the amount. <\/p>\n
If the money was paid, she said she would apply the Probation of Offenders Act to the case, meaning Mr Starrs would avoid a conviction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Fine Gael councillor carrying out voluntary work last year was accosted by a man who called him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,24138,6285,61,60,4827],"class_list":{"0":"post-29750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-diplomacy","10":"tag-horizontal","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-royals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}