A man is beginning a four-month jail sentence for threatening to kill or cause serious harm to T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris and his family.<\/p>\n
Patrick Grealish, of Garra\u00ed an Choirce, Leitir Meall\u00e1in in Co Galway, dropped an appeal against the severity of his sentence at Galway Circuit Court.<\/p>\n
Last October, the 50-year-old pleaded guilty to making online threats against Mr Harris and his family.<\/p>\n
The offences occurred in August 2024, when the accused sent a message, via social media, to the Fine Gael leader.<\/p>\n
In a victim impact statement during the course of the proceedings against Grealish, Mr Harris outlined the trauma and fear the threats had caused.<\/p>\n
He said his family home had been violated by the correspondence sent to him and the messages had caused hurt, pain and worry.<\/p>\n
The T\u00e1iniste said the actions could not be without consequences, especially given the increased frequency of such threats against public figures.<\/p>\n
Grealish was sentenced to eight months, with the final four months suspended, last February, but was given leave to appeal the severity of the sentence.<\/p>\n
He had presented a letter of apology, expressing remorse for his actions.<\/p>\n
Today, at Galway Circuit Court, his legal representatives informed Judge Brian O’Callaghan that their client was dropping his appeal.<\/p>\n
As a result, he was taken from the courthouse to begin his jail term.<\/p>\n
The suspended portion of the sentence is conditional on Grealish entering a bond of \u20ac250, being of good behaviour, and remaining alcohol and intoxicant free for a period of 12 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man is beginning a four-month jail sentence for threatening to kill or cause serious harm to T\u00e1naiste…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-483108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483108","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=483108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}