{"id":4070,"date":"2012-10-27T19:29:58","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T19:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=4070"},"modified":"2021-03-08T18:09:28","modified_gmt":"2021-03-08T18:09:28","slug":"e9-worth-of-criminal-damage-to-gilmores-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/27\/e9-worth-of-criminal-damage-to-gilmores-car\/","title":{"rendered":"\u20ac9 Worth Of Criminal Damage To Gilmore’s Car"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eamon Gilmore, the Irish Labour Party Tanaiste (Depute Prime Minister) took protestor, Donall O Ceallaigh, to court for criminal damage to his car. The following article from eirigi highlights both the light, and far mote serious sides to this case.<\/p>\n

\"\"
An egg causes ‘damage’ to Gilmore’s car<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Peals of laughter rang out in Court 4 of the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin this morning when it was revealed that a grand total of \u20ac9 worth of \u2018criminal damage\u2019 had been allegedly caused to the ministerial car of Eamon Gilmore during an \u00e9ir\u00edg\u00ed organised anti-austerity protest in Ballyfermot on Friday October 5th.<\/p>\n

Further laughter erupted when the Garda witness revealed that the \u20ac9 had been spent on a car wash which \u2018repaired\u2019 the \u2018criminal damage.\u2019 Despite the obvious farce of the situation the charges of criminal damage and breach of the peace against D\u00f3nall \u00d3 Ceallaigh were not struck out by the presiding judge.<\/p>\n

Speaking in relation to the court appearance Cathaoirleach \u00e9ir\u00edg\u00ed Brian Leeson said, \u201cToday\u2019s court proceedings would have been hilarious had the judge thrown the case out of court, but as it stands a young man remains on criminal charges; facing the prospect of criminal convictions. When D\u00f3nall was originally charged the Garda\u00ed claimed that somewhere in the region of \u20ac200 worth of damage had been done to Gilmore\u2019s car and possibly more, but now it turns out there was no damage at all. If criminal damage can be fixed with a car wash the Garda\u00ed might want to consider charging the seagulls and pigeons that regularly cause criminal damage to cars across the state!\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Leeson continued by condemning the state\u2019s attempts to criminalise legitimate protest, \u201cYet again we have witnessed the state going to great effort and expense to haul an anti-austerity protester through the courts on trumped up charges. We have seen the same thing in Mayo over the last number of years where dozens of protesters, including \u00e9ir\u00edg\u00ed activists, have been charged for resisting the giveaway of the Corrib Gas field. And in Dublin \u00e9ir\u00edg\u00ed members have been brought before the courts on a range of spurious charges. Indeed the only people that have been convicted as a result of the entire banking crisis are two \u00e9ir\u00edg\u00ed members who took part in a protest outside Anglo Irish headquarters.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd \u00e9ir\u00edg\u00ed councillor, Louise Minihan, was jailed for seven days for the non-payment of a fine arising from her protest against Mary Harney. On that occasion the governor of the D\u00f3chas centre even told Louise that she would be detained for the full seven days because of political interference, stating that the governor had \u2018got a phone call\u2019. It is abundantly clear that the state is attempting to criminalise the very notion of protest and that it is willing to use the full extent of the law, and beyond, to deter people from coming onto the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leeson concluded by calling for further protest and direct actions, \u201cIt suits the establishment political parties to maintain a fa\u00e7ade of democracy where the population only get a limited say once every five years. It suits them when protest is limited to polite walks around Dublin city centre. It suits them to have a revolving door system of government where TDs get paid a fortune not to rock the boat too much.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe establishment political parties have failed the people of this state and this country. The current model of representative democracy has failed. It is time for a new form of democracy where the people are not simply regarded as sheep to be herded into support of one establishment party or the other. The time is long past for mass protests, general strikes and direct actions against those who have created the current economic and social catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n

First published on:- http:\/\/www.eirigi.org\/latest\/latest261012_2.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eamon Gilmore, the Irish Labour Party Tanaiste (Depute Prime Minister) took protestor, Donall O Ceallaigh, to court for criminal damage to his car. The following article from eirigi highlights both the light, and far mote serious sides to this case. Peals of laughter rang out in Court 4 of the Criminal Courts of Justice in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1843,1855,1856,1847,1876],"tags":[1231],"class_list":["post-4070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-capitalists-organise","category-exploitation-and-emancipation","category-economic-struggles","category-the-eu","category-ireland-against-unionism","tag-author-eirigi"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":4098,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4070"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18334,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4070\/revisions\/18334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}