“It’s desperate what happens on St Patrick’s Day,” said Judge Seamus Hughes, pointing out how he had recently dealt with a variety of public order cases arising from the festive day last year.
He made the comments as he convicted a Mullingar man of assault causing harm, but noting that balance was required in a case where a father of three defended his children after someone threw a bottle at them.
On St Patrick’s Day last at 7pm Derek Keena (35 ) of The Cottage, Russellstown was with his two younger children on Church Avenue when a bottle was thrown in his direction, striking him in the shoulder but narrowly missing one of his children.
Solicitor Louis Kiernan said Keena went to remonstrate with a group of young people who had thrown the bottle, but they gathered around him.
They shouted and called him “a baldy bo****ks”, the court heard.
In the melee that followed, two security guards from McDonalds intervened but Keena head-butted one of them, leaving the guard with a wound that required seven stitches over his eye.
Mr Kiernan said his client lost his temper, and Judge Hughes said he couldn’t fault anyone for protecting their children.
But he noted seven previous convictions for public order offences, and that Keena had struck an innocent security guard who had been helping the situation.
He said this showed “a certain demeanour” and that Keena was well capable of looking after himself.
An out-of-work carpenter, Keena was not proud of what happened, Mr Kiernan said, and would need an extra couple of weeks to gather €250 for compensation.
€500 was handed over and the case adjourned to March 7.
