Caretaker denies he made call girl threat
Allegation ‘is scandalous’
A K CLUB greenkeeper has described as a ‘scandalous allegation’ claims he threatened a former colleague over call girl claims, on the orders of hotel owner Dr Michael Smurfit.
Gerry Byrne has denied in the High Court that he made any such ‘violent assault’ which caused Peter Curran’s ‘life to disintegrate’, his counsel Bernard McDonagh said.
During cross-examination, the former K Club food and beverage manager insisted that he was ‘100%’ threatened in relation to concerns he had aired previously about the way the golf and hotel resort was run.
This included an allegation by him that apartments in the resort were rented to call girls and paid for by the K Club.
Mr Curran has alleged Mr Byrne had said: ‘Dr Smurfit has not forgotten the statements about him and the call girls. Dr Smurfit knows where to find you and this is not over.’
Mr Curran had told the court on Thursday that Dr Smurfit was a ‘tyrant’ and that the incident at Punchestown Races in May 2011 was an opportunity for the hotel mogul ‘to execute a hit’.
He added: ‘He is a tyrannical man with motive and means.’
Mr McDonagh said his client would tell the court that he never saw Mr Curran at the races at all, and that the allegation was ‘scandalous’.
But Mr Curran said he had a witness who would say he saw Mr Byrne coming out of the toilets at Punchestown just behind him. Mr Curran said Mr Byrne was one of many K Club staff who were given instructions by Dr Smurfit that they had to follow or else they would ‘get the bullet’.
He said he had ‘no hard feelings’ towards the greenkeeper, and added: ‘I think that Gerry is upset because if you are doing a job for Dr Smurfit, you are meant to come away clean.
‘If he’s upset, it’s not by my doing. He should have taken a step back and not have gone...My heart goes out to him... but he should not have confronted me and carried out the instructions of Dr Smurfit.’
The 50-year-old, from Cahersiveen, Co. Kerry, said he had already been battling depression and anxiety after allegedly being unfairly dismissed from the fivestar Co. Kildare golf resort in 1998, and that after the threat he was a ‘broken man’ who could never work again.
Asked why he had gone to Punchestown, where he was likely to run into K Club personnel, Mr Curran said he was invited by a friend, and that he had thought there was ‘safety in numbers’.
Mr McDonagh asked Mr Curran if he accepted that he had experienced significant mental and psychiatric problems since 2004.
Mr Curran agreed that that was when a psychiatrist first started
Mr Curran said he had a witness
‘I never saw him at the races’
treating him for problems he had experienced since his exit from the K Club in 1999.
‘You have been on a significant cocktail of antidepressant medication since that time,’ Mr McDonagh asked.
Counsel also asked why there was no mention of the Punchestown incident when his psychiatrist reviewed him in July.
Mr Curran said he had told his psychiatrist about the incident, and that the psychiatrist would confirm this to the court when he was called to be a witness in the case. Mr Curran also asked counsel not to raise his voice when questioning him, saying that he had a medical condition and that the aggressive style of questioning could set him back.
The court also heard that Mr Curran had brought separate legal proceedings for personal injuries after a trip and fall involving a manhole in July 2015.
He had claimed damages for a double fracture of his heel bone, plus a nerve injury to his finger, and for shock, distress and upset.
Mr McDonagh said Mr Curran’s own claim in that case suggested that his mental problems had been exacerbated by the fall.
‘Do you accept that all of your symptoms do not relate to 2011?’ he asked. Mr Curran rejected the suggestion. Mr Curran had successfully sued on an earlier occasion for an injury to his finger caused when opening a window, the court heard. The case continues before Judge Anthony Barr on Tuesday.