Irish Daily Mail

‘Stop giving these vile marauders bail so they can target me again’

Farmer burgled four times pleads for change to the law

- By Ali Bracken Crime Correspond­ent ali.bracken@dailymail.ie

‘Casey said what everyone thinks’

A FARMER – whose home and business have been burgled four times – has called on the judiciary and Government to crack down on marauding gangs and put criminals behind bars rather than grant bail.

Barry O’Gorman, a married father-of-three with a farm outside Thurles, Co. Tipperary, said that tougher sentencing, electronic tagging and a clampdown on free legal aid for repeat offenders is required.

‘It’s laughable. There is no deterrent at the moment. They go around the country carrying out these robberies. When they get caught they get bail and they just keep doing it,’ he told the Irish Daily Mail.

‘The judicial system needs to start putting them behind bars, we need to get tough on sentencing. There are thousands of people like me whose livelihood is being impacted by these criminals.’

The 45-year-old farmer’s yard has been robbed twice – thieves took expensive machinery and diesel – while his home has also been broken into twice, with cash, his wife’s jewellery and even his children’s pocket money taken.

The fed-up farmer said he is ‘at a loss’ as to why – if criminals committing break-ins are granted bail instead of being held in custody – they are not at least electronic­ally tagged. If they were, he said, these gangs would not be ‘free at will’ to continue to carry out burglaries nationwide while on bail for other robberies.

‘Why should a person with 60odd conviction­s for break-ins continue to get free legal aid while the victims usually have to pay for all their own losses of what was taken?’ he asked.

No-one has been arrested in any of the four robberies on the farmer and his family. The most recent took place in May when criminals used a crowbar to smash in his back door, which had to be replaced in its entirety.

The gang ‘ransacked’ the farmhouse looking for cash and jewellery, but only made away with €30 stolen from his children’s bed- rooms, which were ‘turned upside down’. ‘My young son came home and saw the Garda forensic team there, the smashed-up back door and his bedroom upended,’ he said. ‘They took his pocket money he had been saving. It upset him, he was only eight.’

A number of other houses close by were targeted on the same day this summer in May, and investigat­ing detectives traced the car used though CCTV to a car dealer in west Dublin, believed to have supplied the Tallaght-based gang with the vehicle.

This same gang, with members from the Travelling community, are also linked with the same vehicle to break-ins in the North. However, none of the suspects has been arrested in relation to the series of break-ins in Tipperary targeting Mr O’Gorman and many of his neighbours.

The farmer added: ‘I don’t blame gardaí. They need more resources. In the last robbery, they didn’t take any of our electronic­s, like TVs or laptops, it was just cash they were after.’

Twice in the summer of 2015, Mr O’Gorman’s farm was targeted by what appears to have been the same criminal gang.

In the first robbery in the dead of night, the gang stole expensive electronic tools. A considerab­le amount of diesel was also siphoned from his vehicles into drums.

Four of Mr O’Gorman’s neighbours were also targeted the same night. He estimated the cost of tools stolen from his yard at over €2,000. In order to claim on insurance, receipts must be kept and he said he hadn’t retained the documents on machinery he’d bought years ago.

He said the ‘most disturbing’ aspect of this robbery was the ‘child’s footprints’ left in the spilled diesel and sand the gang left behind. ‘It’s just disturbing they bring children with them when they go on these crime sprees, targeting a number of farms,’ he said.

Just ten weeks later, the same gang returned – again targeting Mr O’Gorman and four other neighbouri­ng farmhouses.

On this occasion, the criminals stole electronic tools, diesel and expensive plastic for wrapping silage worth thousands of euro from one of his neighbours.

Gardaí never made any arrests or identified suspects in these two burglary sprees targeting several Tipperary farmyards in the summer of 2015.

The first robbery targeting Mr O’Gorman and his family took place eight years ago at their farmhouse. His wife arrived home, holding their three-month-old baby, to discover all her jewellery – including her engagement ring and her mother’s jewellery – had been stolen. A sum of cash was also taken. Again in this case, no arrests were ever made or suspects identified.

Mr O’Gorman said of presidenti­al candidate Peter Casey: ‘I was going to vote for Higgins. But I voted No. 1 for Casey. He said what everyone else was thinking. He was shot down for speaking his mind. You have to admire him for speaking his mind.

‘When crimes comes to your door, it changes how you feel.’

The fed-up farmer’s story of dealing with repeated break-ins comes on the back of rural homeowners nationwide expressing concern and demanding change.

Yesterday, it emerged that farmers in north Co. Dublin have warned they will take the law into their own hands if rural crime continues to go under the radar.

The Mail reported yesterday how demand is growing for automatic jail terms for repeat offenders – with victim groups saying a USstyle ‘two-strike’ rule should be adopted here.

The wave of pressure for the law reforms comes on the back of a Department of Justice memo, released under Freedom of Informatio­n, that highlights how even the Government believes judges are too reluctant to jail thugs found repeatedly guilty of crimes such as sex assault, rape, robbery, burglary, manslaught­er and assault causing harm.

 ??  ?? Victim: Barry O’Gorman, a farmer from Co. Tipperary
Victim: Barry O’Gorman, a farmer from Co. Tipperary

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