A student who obscenely abused two female gardaí over an injured dog had a €400 fine abated to the Probation Act at his Circuit Court appeal last week, but not before the State solicitor got to wag a chastening finger.
Shane Brennan (21 ), Killinure, Glasson, a third year engineering student in Galway, was fined €400 on June 1 on foot of his drunken behaviour on Church St, Athlone at 3.15am on May 2.
The court was told by Garda Emer Finn how she and a colleague had been approached by a group of males on the night in question after a dog had been hit by a car. All but the defendant had been satisfied by their telling them that a vet had been notified.
“He called us c**ts, and said women shouldn’t be in the Gardaí,” said Garda Finn.
“He was foolish, and fuelled by alcohol, but he was motivated by the animal’s distress,” said his barrister, who handed in testimonials from Brennan’s football manager, and from two of his employers.
“What do you think the consequences would be if you told a female lecturer that word, and told her she shouldn’t be an engineer?” asked Peter D Jones for the DPP in cross-examination.
“I’d probably be expelled,” said Brennan.
“To use that word is the lowest form of life, it’s obscene and disgusting...you were the bigshot, and you saw two vulnerable ladies..there was no incident here that the Gardaí couldn’t deal with until you started sticking out your chest,” said Mr Jones.
Brennan’s barrister told the court his client only heard how he had used this word when he read about it in the local papers as he hadn’t attended for the original District Court conviction.
Brennan accepted he used that particular obscenity, but only as he was walking away.
“I said they were a shower of ...” he explained somewhat sheepishly.
Judge Anthony Kennedy accepted this, saying: “In view of his previous good character I will apply the Probation of Offenders Act”, and dismissed Brennan’s €400 fine for his public order conviction.
