An alcoholic who wandered into a solicitor’s office and urinated on a sofa as well as making a nuisance of himself at UHG was sentenced to six months in jail at Galway District Court last Monday.
Thomas McCarthy (48 ) with an address given as Fairgreen Hostel and 12 Hillside, Ballybane, was brought before Judge Mary Fahy for numerous public order offences. The court heard that when cautioned the defendant, who has 91 previous convictions, replied: “Mary Fahy is a lovely judge”.
According to Garda evidence on November 19 in Eyre Square at 2pm McCarthy was found by gardai in a very drunken state lying asleep on the footpath and members of the public had to step over him. Just over a week later, on November 27, gardai were called to a bus stop in Eyre Square by the driver of a bus who complained that there was a male on board who would not leave. When the gardai arrived they had to help the defendant off the bus because he could not walk by himself. That same day at 6pm the defendant was found lying on the ground next to the entrance of UHG and he became very abusive to gardai when they arrived.
On December 5, at 3.30pm McCarthy walked into Padraig Harris Solicitor’s in Merchant’s Road. He was in a very intoxicated state and lay down on the sofa where he urinated on it, causing damage of €500. The next day he was found to be drunk and aggressive at Fairgreen bus station at 9.30pm. On December 7 at 4pm he was back in the vicinity of UHG where he was drunk and abusive to people going in and out of the car park.
Defence solicitor Valerie Corcoran said that her client suffers from severe alcoholism and has “never had it easy”. She said that he had been in the car park of UHG because he had injured his foot two months previously; a car had run over his foot and he had taken the cast off after only two weeks.
Regarding the incident at the solicitor’s office, she said that it is located at the end of the street where the defendant purchases his alcohol and that “he just wandered in”. She said that McCarthy had €250 put aside from his social welfare payments and that he had offered this as compensation to the solicitor. However the money had been declined by the solicitor who “understands” that the man was “down on his luck”.
“Here we go again, I had warned him,” said Judge Fahy referring to an earlier case in September where McCarthy had been given a three month sentence for urinating on a bus. Judge Fahy added that the defendant’s situation was unfortunate but that this type of behaviour was not acceptable in the vicinity of a hospital “which is inundated with people”. She said that people who are upset themselves and waiting seven to nine hours at the hospital could not be expected to be so sympathetic to McCarthy’s condition.
As well as a prison sentence Judge Fahy also fined the defendant a total of €300 to be paid forthwith.
