An unenviable criminal record of 579 convictions has been clocked up by a 55-year-old man \u2014 many of them related to drunkenness \u2014 as a result of a lifelong inability to cope with a traffic crash that saw six members of his family killed when he was a young man.<\/p>\n
Richard O\u2019Brien of 14 Ardshanavooley, Killarney, Co Kerry, has now pleaded guilty to five more public order charges at Cork District Court. He admitted being drunk and a danger on five occasions in a one-week period and engaging in threatening behaviour during one incident in Cork city.<\/p>\n
Sergeant John Kelleher said Richard O\u2019Brien had a total of 579 previous convictions. Of those, 362 were for being so intoxicated that he was a danger to himself or others and 63 were for engaging in threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to lead to a breach of the peace.<\/p>\n
Judge Mary Dorgan remarked previously that the extent of the defendant\u2019s public order convictions must be a record. Shane Collins-Daly, solicitor, referred to that remark by the judge when he was outlining mitigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe describes himself as having a life ruined from alcohol. Six members of his family were killed in a road traffic accident \u2026 Since then he has never been able to beat the alcohol addiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe dries out in prison, he relapses when he gets out \u2014 he described it as a vicious circle. To his credit, while there are four drunkenness charges, there is only one of threatening behaviour,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Judge Dorgan imposed a total prison term of two months on O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n
On December 27, 2025, at Oliver Plunkett St he was drunk and a danger. On December 29, 2025, again at Oliver Plunkett St, he was both drunk and threatening.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On New Year\u2019s Eve \u2014 December 31, 2025 \u2014 at Grand Parade he was drunk again. Later on the same date he was drunk at Oliver Plunkett St.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Finally, on January 4 this year he was drunk at Castle St.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An unenviable criminal record of 579 convictions has been clocked up by a 55-year-old man \u2014 many of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[34756,79,54,61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-406477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-cork-courts","9":"tag-cork-news","10":"tag-courts","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406477","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=406477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}