Politics, policing and the pain of grief

Men in dark clothing with torches were banging and roaring at the windows and doors of Noel and Lorraine Thomas’ rural home in Gortachalla exactly one year ago.

It was a rude and shocking awakening for the sleeping county councillor and his wife Lorraine, a special needs assistant in Galway city. Forceful voices loudly demanded entry on a crisp and cold January morn before dawn.

“It was 6.30 in the morning and we were kind of going: ‘what the hell is going on?’ So I opened the curtain and there were six or seven gardaí outside. So I go down, open the door, and they come in and they say: ‘we've got a search warrant for your home’. And I said ‘Well, give me the search warrant’. So they handed it over to me, and I read it and said, ‘Okay, well, fair enough, I can do nothing about it. So off you go’.”

Councillor Thomas, who represents Conamara South, relays the story with a matter-of-fact tone, like he has told it many times before.

The stocky landscape gardener is sitting at the pinewood kitchen table of his spotlessly clean, 27-year-old home outside Moycullen, dressed in a shirt and jeans. A small, white dog snoozes on a couch behind him, beneath childhood photos of the Thomas’ four children. It seems a surreal setting for an incredibly rare police raid on the home of an elected representative.

It is important to note: Councillor Thomas was never charged with any crime. He gave a statement in Oughterard Garda barracks, and is frustrated that Garda authorities refuse to tell him if he is under any investigation. He is critical of "very senior" officers, but not local rank and file.

“I don't think for one minute that any gardaí, even those who came to search my house, wanted to be there at all. To be honest, you could see it on their faces.”

The 51-year-old says he was calm during the raid. All four of his adult children were in the house that morning, and along with one of the daughter’s partners, all were confined to the sitting room, supervised by a garda, while the house was searched for 45 minutes. Thomas was quizzed by gardaí from Galway, and the detectives from Dublin. His two phones were seized.

Thomas claims he experienced neither surprise nor fear, although he did feel his home was violated.

Political policing

So why was his house searched? Thomas blames pressure put on Garda Commissioner Drew Harris after a spate of buildings earmarked for International Protection Applicant accommodation were firebombed, including one in Thomas’ constituency. He even attempted to doorstep Commissioner Harris when he was in Galway to open a new station in Spiddal last May. Harris refused a conversation with Thomas.

“In relation to this sort of stuff, you've got gardaí enforcing Black and Tan tactics down the South again,” says Thomas, who holds strong opinions on what he sees as a politicised police force.

In December 2023, the dining wing behind the empty Ross Lake House Hotel in nearby Rosscahill was being repurposed as a temporary dormitory for up to 70 asylum seekers, some of whom were reportedly sleeping rough. Noel and Lorraine held their wedding reception there 25 years ago, when the hotel was bustling. On the night of Saturday, 16 December, the rear of the building went up in flames, in a suspected criminal damage attack possibly motivated by racist ideology.

Happening so close to Christmas, and after a series of arson attacks across housing crisis-hit Ireland on buildings allocated to homeless refugees, the wintertime inferno made headlines in Britain, Europe and beyond. Videos of the 170-year-old hotel burning went viral. Councillor Thomas’ comments to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland the following Monday – that Irish authorities should refuse asylum applications “because the inn is full” – won him instant infamy.

First elected to Galway County Council as a member of Fianna Fáil in 2014, Thomas says he left the party after he was disciplined for his comments to RTÉ, and after an explosive telephone conversation with the party’s leader.

Falling out with Fianna Fáil

“Micheal Martin has single-handedly destroyed Fianna Fáil. I said it to him straight to his face – well, on the phone,” says Thomas, who describes a blazing row between a Conamaraman and a Corkman which ultimately resulted in an irreparable parting.

Thomas claims to have followed the genesis of Independent Ireland before this schism with Fianna Fáil, and that his disenchantment with his former party dates to its decision to prop-up Fine Gael’s 2016 minority government, and then formal coalition in 2020.

Michael Fitzmaurice, TD for Roscommon-Galway, phoned Thomas not long after this argument with Martin. Thomas agreed to join Fitzmaurice’s fledgling Independent Ireland party immediately. He didn’t even need to sleep on it, he says, but an announcement was delayed because of ongoing Garda investigations related to the fire.

Thomas says he has taken legal advice on Garda activity in the weeks following the Ross Lake House fire. He feels gardaí intimidated vulnerable people living in his constituency. He is considering taking legal action.

“I’m concerned there’s a possibility there may be corruption at the top [levels] of the Garda,” asserts Thomas. When pressed to explain, he insists he means gardaí taking orders from ill-defined actors he calls “government officials”.

“The Garda is supposed to look after communities, but we're starting to turn into a country here, where the Garda - the force - is being used by government bodies to actually try and enforce some of their policies.”

Thomas says he does not know who set Ross Lake House on fire, but he has reflected on it deeply, and proposes theories ranging from racist agitators from outside the area overnighting nearby, or other outsiders motivated by financial gain. An Garda Síochána say investigations are ongoing, and that the organisation "does not comment on third party remarks".

“If [the guards] get them, they deserve everything they get,” Thomas says of those responsible. Asked if he has concern for the homeless people who were supposed to move into Ross Lake House, or workers inside, he said he would have more concern if they were Ukrainian families, but not the young men he was expecting based on documents he had seen.

Legacy

He sighs in response to a question that if he had a Wikipedia entry, it would be dominated by the Ross Lake Hotel fire incident, and his anti-immigration rhetoric in its aftermath.

“Well, I suppose that's all going to depend on what happens to my political career between now and [the future]” he says, admitting that the national and international news coverage of the Ross Lake House fire is what he is best known for outside the county.

“But the most amazing thing that has come out of all of this, is that almost all the ‘strong opinions’ that I had, and my comrade, [former Fianna Fáil councillor] Seamus Walsh, [also] had at that time; the government themselves, for the last few months, are now saying the same thing” he asserts.

Thomas disagrees that his political career to date, with a decade of work behind him as a local authority member, will be overshadowed by the arson incident. He stood in the general election last November, and scored a massive 9.4 per cent of first preference votes in Galway West: Impressive for a first-time candidate for a new political party. He stood on a platform of rural issues, immigration reform, and building roads.

Analysis suggests his tilt denied Fine Gael’s Moycullen-based senator, Sean Kyne, a Dáil seat; took plenty of Fianna Fáil votes from Gráinne Seoige; and that Thomas came within a hair’s breadth of unseating Noel Grealish (Ind ), who has represented Galway West since 2002. His unsuccessful run, disrupting the constituency’s apple cart after the retirement of Éamon Ó Cuiv, is seen by many as the reason why Galway now has no Conamara-based TD for the first time in a century.

Ambition

Does Thomas wonder that if he remained in Fianna Fáil he could have won the party a second seat in Galway West?

“I would imagine that if I has stayed in Fianna Fáil, with everything that had happened over the last while, I’d say they would’ve done everything to ensure that I wasn’t selected,” he surmises. “I have washed my hands of Fianna Fáil. I have no regrets. And I do practicality no thinking about that,” says Thomas, who adds that if he were a TD, he would not vote for Micheál Martin to be taoiseach. “It’s not a party thing. I just think he’s a very weak character.”

Thomas did not attend the Galway West count centre last November to watch his tallies surpass 10 of his 16 competitors, nor witness how close he came to knocking out Deputy Grealish for the final seat on the 16th count. One of eight siblings who have returned home to Ireland from all over the world, he was helping to organise a funeral for his father instead.

“It was the day of the actual vote. That’s when it happened. I got a phone from the hospital to tell me he’d passed away,” says Thomas. His father, also named Noel, he describes as a “big, strong vibrant man who played his last ever game of hurling for Spiddal when he was 60.” He had recently been admitted to hospital with a bad cold, suspected to be pneumonia. Soon after diagnosed with lung cancer, Mr Thomas died just three weeks later.

“He just went. He went downhill incredibly fast. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s hard.” says Thomas, who admits he thinks about his dad daily. “The only good thing is that there was little pain. He didn’t suffer long at all.”

Thomas says he got his interest in politics from his mother, Sheila, and became interested in Fianna Fáil through local member Mikey Walsh. He is still gunning for the Oireachtas, currently as a candidate on the Seanad’s competitive Agriculture Panel.

“Trying to get councillors’ votes from across the country is basically canvassing professional canvassers,” laughs Thomas. He points out that Independent Ireland has 23 councillors, four TDs and one MEP. “If we get over the line with this, we’ll have every box ticked,” he says in relation to his senate run.

As the Ross Lake House fire flickers from memory, there is undimmed ambition in Gortachalla.