74-year-old Sligo farmer Tom Niland remains on life support with ‘no feeling from the neck down’, his family have said.
Saddening new details on the pensioner’s condition have emerged seven months on from the horrific attack on Mr Niland in January 2022. The Sligo farmer was at home watching television at around 7pm on the night of January 18 when he answered the door to three masked men who forced their way into his home in the small rural village of Skreen.
Mr Niland, who lived on his own in an isolated area, suffered horrendous injuries after being “beaten to a pulp” in the aggravated burglary, in which the perpetrators made off with a “small sum” of money.
The severely injured man, who had his shoelaces tied together to make it harder to raise the alarm, managed to crawl onto the nearby roadside – the N59 Sligo to Ballina road – where he was found by neighbours. Initially, he was able to provide a brief description of what had happened, but soon fell into a coma. Shortly after the brutal assault, one of Mr Niland’s devastated relatives described his injuries as “grotesque”.
In July, two men from County Mayo accused of the vicious assault on Mr Niland were sent forward for trial.
John Irving (28) and Francis Harman (54) are charged with assault causing serious harm and the false imprisonment of Mr Niland as well as aggravated burglary with a knife at the farmer’s home. A third accused, John Clarke (24), also from County Mayo, was also served with the book of evidence on the same three charges.
Four members of Mr Niland’s family were present in court last month accompanied by a Garda Liaison officer as the men were sent forward for trial.
The pensioner has been on life support in Sligo University Hospital since the appalling attack. In recent months, there were reports that his condition was showing “some signs of improvement” when he awoke in a semi-state of consciousness.
In an interview with the Irish Daily Mail, Mr Niland’s cousin, Michael Walsh, gave an update on his condition. He said his cousin has undergone numerous procedures and treatments over the last seven months. However, his family have now been forced to accept that he may never recover, he said, but they wanted to thank doctors for “never giving up” on Mr Niland.
Speaking to the paper, Mr Walsh, who visits Mr Niland in hospital on most days, said: “Tom remains on life support in Sligo General Hospital.
“There’s been no real progress and we’re resigned to the fact that he’ll stay like this for the remainder of his life. It seems that it’s something we just have to accept, bar a miracle.
“The doctors have tried everything, and Tom will soon have a plasma exchange procedure done in Galway University Hospital. But he’s had two of these treatments already with not much results, but we’ll see what happens”.
He said that his cousin’s condition was very fragile, adding: “He has an infection at the moment which is a problem because it could mean he can die suddenly if pneumonia sets in”.
“He recently had a scope put through his mouth and into his lungs to see what’s going on. Some parts of his lung have collapsed, but we can only hope it pulls through. Thankfully, the doctors here have never given up on him”.
He said he constantly talks to his cousin at his hospital bedside, aware that he may be able to understand what he is saying.
“I ask him things like: “Can you hear me?” and “How are you keeping?” and just general questions because he could be locked into himself and capable of understanding what I say.
“He can follow the movement of people in the room, but there’s no way of telling if he knows who we are”.
Following the attack, residents in the small County Sligo village of Skreen raised over €20,000 to help pay for Mr Niland’s medical expenses, something which has been a huge help to the family. Mr Walsh also said that the thoughts and prayers of people across Ireland have meant a lot to the family during a bleak time.
“I can’t even express how grateful we are to the thousands of people who have shown us support. ‘Knowing that we’re in everyone’s thoughts and prayers means so much”.
In February, Gript editor John McGuirk penned that Tom Niland should be a household name – as he highlighted the fact there had not been much in the way of discussion about “the fears of elderly people living in isolated parts of rural Ireland” one month on from the brutal assault.
“Many of us, of course, have relatives who live like this. Older people, perhaps widowed, or people who did not marry to begin with, living in old houses passed down by their parents, whose closest relatives are nephews and nieces living in cities, miles from where they are”, he wrote.
“These people, too, live in fear. They fear the people who knock on their doors in the middle of the day, offering to fix drains, or sell them gates, or tools, or clean their windows. They worry that they might come back, later that evening, having scouted out their circumstances. For much of the last two years, many of them have feared covid, and the risk to people of their age, and lived in a kind of self-enforced isolation, with only the national broadcaster for company, warning them of more, and more, threatening variants.
“Many of them have circumscribed their social lives: given up mass, or their weekly bingo game, or their Friday night in the local pub.
“The plight of the rural elderly does not command as much attention as the plight of the young, urban, female: It is decidedly less sexy. It provides decidedly fewer opportunities for virtue signalling. There is not much that one can muster, by way of lecturing the public to “do better”.
“There are, however, things that can, and should be done,” Mr McGuirk said, calling for changes including a reform in sentencing, the provision of grants for older people in Ireland to install wireless CCTV for their homes, and the strengthening of rural policing.