A 28-year-old man has become the first to be sentenced at Circuit Court level for participating in the Dublin riots. Declan Donaghey from Dublin was jailed for six and a half years by a judge on Wednesday.
Mr Donaghey set a garda car on fire and attacked an IPAS centre on the night of the riots last year, which occurred in the wake of the stabbing of children and their care worker at a primary school on Parnell Square. He pleaded guilty to arson and criminal damage almost one year on from the disorder on November 23 last year.
He shouted “scumbags” at gardaí as he was led away on Wednesday afternoon while the public order unit escorted his family and supporters from the court, who had become upset.
A court previously heard that the unrest in the city centre was among the “largest scenes of public disorder that has ever occurred in the history of the State,” with Mr Donaghey, of William’s Place, Upper Dorset Street, sent forward for trial in June.
He was accused of four offences at Parnell Street: arson by setting fire to a marked Garda vehicle, criminal damage of another Garda vehicle and throwing an object through the glass front window of a business. The court heard that Donaghey had picked up a burning box and placed it in the back seat of a garda car, and had also jumped on the bonnet of another Garda car.
The Dublin man pleaded guilty to all five charges, and told gardaí that he had “made himself look like a scumbag.”
In the circuit court on Wednesday, Judge Orla Crowe said she did not accept that Mr Donaghey had acted “in a moment of madness.” It came after the accused said he had gotten “caught up in the thing” and had committed his actions “without thinking.”
Earlier this week, the court heard from Gardaí Detective Inspector Ken Hoare, who said that attempts were made to damage his van while he was inside it, and two wheelie bins had been thrown at him, amid shouts of “burn him out.”
He said he could not get out of the van and his life was put in danger as the van came under attack. He said that four gardaí who came to rescue him were also attacked, and had to flee as they chased off Parnell Street before the garda was brought to safety.
The crowd was eventually pushed towards O’Connell Street.
According to an RTE court report, Mr Donaghey told gardaí he had been “very angry” that day because his partner’s cousin had an eight-year-old child in the school where the stabbing had occurred. He also penned a letter to the court apologising to “the Government, everyone,” adding that what he had done was completely “out of character”.
He said he had gone into the area to “support the victims” and “did it without thinking” but that his actions had made him “look like a scumbag”.
In a letter to the court, he wrote that he had “never experienced a feeling like it” after learning about the stabbings, and that he was “totally traumatised when I received a call” that someone he knew had a child who could potentially be a victim.
He said he witnessed his partner’s family member in a distraught state because it was “unknown if she was one of three children stabbed”.
However, Judge Orla Crowe described Mr Donaghey as an “active, spirited participant” in the disorder, and said he had been “a participant in one of the gravest public order incidents in the history of the state.”
She said his actions amounted to “shameless and senseless vandalism” and that any attack on gardaí was “an attack on all of society.”
Mr Donaghey’s defence Counsel Michael Bowman said his client became part of “the herd”, “the group mentality on the streets of Dublin that night.”
Judge Crowe sentenced him to seven-and-a-half years for arson and concurrent sentences of four-and-a-half years for rioting and three years for criminal damage, with the final year suspended.
The sentence comes just days after the mother of one of the three victims of the attack, a little girl who turned six last month, said that “the little girl we knew died that day.”
The child, who suffered “life changing” injuries in the attack at the Irish-speaking school, remains non-verbal and has to be fed through a tube. She is unable to walk and requires round-the-clock care.
Her mother, speaking to The Irish Independent, recalled seeing her child’s Paw Patrol school bag discarded on the ground along with her pink Barbie shoes, as people desperately battled to try and save her life.
“She did die. So on November 23, we’re going to celebrate her second birth. Her rebirth. I think that the important thing to know there is hope and there is beauty and there is love,” she told the paper.