{"id":96168,"date":"2025-10-22T03:58:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T03:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/96168\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T03:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T03:58:11","slug":"galway-man-pleads-guilty-to-threatening-to-kill-tanaiste-simon-harris-and-his-family-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/96168\/","title":{"rendered":"Galway man pleads guilty to threatening to kill T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris and his family \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">A man has pleaded guilty to issuing threats on social media to kill or cause serious harm to T\u00e1naiste <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/simon-harris\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/simon-harris\/\">Simon Harris<\/a> and his family just over a year ago. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Patrick Grealish (49), of Garra\u00ed an Choirce, Lettermullen, Co Galway, appeared before Derrynea District Court on Tuesday, entering his guilty plea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">He first appeared before Judge Gerard Furlong at a special sitting of Galway District Court in August, 2024, four days after the alleged threats were made on social media, at a time when Mr Harris was Taoiseach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Grealish has been remanded on bail since then, which was extended after entering the guilty plea at Tuesday\u2019s court appearance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He has been remanded on continuing bail to appear at Derrynea District Court on December 12th next for pre-sanction probation report.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Mr Grealish is accused of making a threat to kill or cause harm to Mr Harris and his family on August 4th, 2024. The court was told the offence under section five of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997 carries a sentence of up to 10 years on conviction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">At the initial court appearance in August last year, Det Sgt Eamonn O\u2019Neill of the Special Detective Unit told the court he arrested Mr Grealish the previous day and charged him at Galway Regional Garda Headquarters. When invited to reply to the charge, Mr Grealish said, \u201cNo thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Det Sgt O\u2019Neill objected to bail on several grounds, including the serious nature of the offence, that it related to a member of Government, and that the alleged offence of threatening to kill or cause serious harm was being taken \u201cvery seriously\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Det Sgt O\u2019Neill added that Mr Grealish was caught \u201cred-handed\u201d with the device allegedly used to post the offending message. The court was informed that the accused man had co-operated with the garda\u00ed when he was first arrested. He was also the sole carer for his elderly mother and had his own health problems.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Mr Grealish, who is on social welfare, was granted bail on condition he strictly abide by conditions set down by the court, including staying off social media. He also undertook at the August 2024 hearing to have no contact with the injured party, including online.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Grealish also agreed to surrender his passport and not apply for new travel documents, to reside at his home, to be of good behaviour at all times, to provide garda\u00ed with a contactable phone number, to observe a curfew of 11pm-7am and to appear at all court sittings in relation to this matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has pleaded guilty to issuing threats on social media to kill or cause serious harm to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[60276,60277,61,60,43,60278,60279],"class_list":{"0":"post-96168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-elected-representative","9":"tag-galway-district-court","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-patrick-grealish","14":"tag-threat"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96168","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=96168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}