The killing of John Ward and the trial of Pádraig Nally has exposed the deep sense of vulnerability felt by locals in this part of Mayo, writes Kathy Sheridan.
The trial of Mayo farmer Pádraig Nally for the murder of Traveller and father of 11 John Ward coincided with the finest of hay-making weather. This may explain why in the first few days, his support consisted of his sister Maureen and just a handful of neighbours in a largely empty public courtroom in Castlebar.
By day three, when neighbours were due to give evidence, his supporters almost filled the courtroom. It looked like the beginning of a campaign. Asked if this was so, one man nodded regretfully: "It's not - but it should be. The whole of Co Mayo should be out supporting that man". By last Wednesday, the sixth and final day of the trial, the courtroom was packed. Nally's previous long, lonely walk across the Mall each day for lunch in the face of media cameras became instead a show of strength.
Images of Nally returning to the courthouse, escorted by a stout crew of friends and neighbours, tell a story not only of a side of Ireland where life-long bonds of neighbourly loyalty still exist, but of an Ireland increasingly unwilling "to lie down and play" - in the words of Nally's counsel, Brendan Grehan - with people who would threaten its peace of mind.
There was quiet dismay among them on Tuesday when Mr Justice Paul Carney ruled out the possibility of an acquittal, explaining to the jury that "the amount of force [ used to kill John Ward] cannot be objectively justified". When the Co Mayo jury of seven women and five men delivered its verdict of manslaughter after two hours and 10 minutes, it was to a virtually silent courtroom. The only movement was from among the substantial Garda presence.
Afterwards, a tearful and bewildered-looking Marie Ward, the victim's widow, stood in the lobby, unable to gather her thoughts. One of her brothers-in-law told her to tell journalists that she felt the family had not got justice, that she was very unhappy that the trial had been held in Mayo and that she would be appealing it to the High Court. She said that her four-year-old son was "roaring all the time" for his father and that she was on a lot of medication for diabetes and high blood pressure.
As they went outside to the television cameras, Paddy Ward called out: "Would a Traveller get away with manslaughter if he killed a farmer like that?"
Meanwhile Nally, who had been remanded on bail for sentencing on November 11th next, was escorted by four gardaí out a side door and down to the nearby Garda station, where he had a cup of tea before driving off in his white Astra van with his sister.
While the Wards were articulating their unhappiness, Nally's supporters had scattered, avoiding the media. When contacted sometime later, some said they had no wish to "fan the flames further" between the two communities. Others seemed fearful of being associated with any further criticism of particular Travellers. None wanted to be named.
"None of us deserves in our lives to suddenly be newspaper material, but those lovely, quiet, decent people are now part of folklore in a bad way", said one community figure. "Pádraig Nally was a decent, quiet bachelor man, barely touched by the Celtic Tiger, one of the last of the small farmers, trying to make a living off farming when there's no living off farming. Are people like him now vulnerable? Is this now a category that is vulnerable to a more aggressive type of Traveller? If you had given that man 100 possibilities of what might happen in his life, he'd never have seen jail or shooting a person dead as one of them."
"It's a last stand thing, it's powerlessness against months, maybe years, of intimidation," said another. "We know of several cases where a 'target' had just drawn out a substantial amount of money? How do the robbers know this? Who's watching? How do they know when people are on holidays or gone to a match?"
IT'S A RECURRING question in this small community on the shores of Lough Corrib. "They drive around in different cars on different days so you'd pay no remarks on them. But that's when they're sussing the places out, looking for people who live alone or are out at work during the day. The afternoons round here are the quietest part of the day."
In court, 18-year-old Tom Ward - who was driving his father on the day he was killed - said under cross-examination that he had had 10 or 15 different cars in the six months beforehand, but denied that he bought and sold the cars so that they could not be traced back to him when he used them.
The view of a small, vulnerable community under constant threat was challenged in court by crime figures compiled for Co Mayo by Sgt James Carroll. He said that in the Cong and Shrule sub-districts (including Cross), crime figures were no higher than for the rest of the county. There were five reported burglaries in 2003 (ie break-ins to private dwellings); items stolen included a power washer, a generator, a fireplace and power tools. There were also 30 reported thefts (28 of these in Cong sub-district), including eight boat engines. By 2004, reported thefts in the Cong sub-district had dropped from 28 to 11. According to Sgt Carroll, "the downward trend would seem to be continuing."
Asked if any "special group" had fallen under suspicion for the spate of thefts, he said there would have been a number of suspects in respect of the boat engines, "people living in the Headford area from the Travelling community, not the deceased [ John Ward] but a man who passed away last May."
When it was suggested to him by Brendan Grehan that "a lot of crime goes unreported", he replied: "I don't know if there's a lot - but there are incidents that are not reported, and that's undeniable . . . There are cases when people just lost things they suspected were stolen. I can only deal with what's reported to the station." He pointed out that one local resident had listed 16 separate incidents - "yet when they were checked out, they came down to two or three."
Locals however, say that many thefts go unreported. "You wouldn't report something like a towing chain or a top-link. You'd be only wasting your time trying to get a guard. And d'ye really think they're going to spend time trying to recover a towing chain?"
THERE IS ALSO a strong suspicion that pride prevents many old people from admitting to having been abused and robbed.
"A chainsaw for instance, would be a decent thing to admit to having been stolen from you . . . But money? That'd be a case of 'ah, ya backward aul' clown ya'. There'd be humiliation there."
Locals also make the point that while what they call "incidents" might not result in thefts or burglaries, they are no less intimidating for the people concerned with long-term consequences for the target's sense of security. One man living alone was roused at midnight by men who claimed to be looking for a pony; locals believe he averted attack only by pretending to be talking to someone else inside the house.
"The problem is that you can't do anything about that kind of thing until they do something - and that's where the climate of fear comes in. You're all the time waiting for it to happen, all the time on edge".
EVERYONE AGREES THE situation is hugely exacerbated by the virtual disappearance from small rural stations of the local sergeant and garda, the kind who knew their patch and people "inside out". "There's at least four different escape routes out of here into Galway," said a man from Cross. "We'd be expected to call the Claremorris gardaí but we're nearer to Galway. By the time the guards would get here, sure the robbers would be in Galway."
The Garda station in Cong, they say, is only open a few hours every week. Ballinrobe, eight miles from Cross, where Pádraig Nally tried to report the burglary of his chainsaw from an inside toilet in February last year, also has limited opening hours. This was the incident that, according to evidence, started Nally on his downward spiral of fearand paranoia. Nally testified that he tried to report the burglary twice - waiting outside the station, on one occasion, for an hour and a half - but no one arrived.
One man describes how farmers, required to produce their shotguns at the local Garda station annually to have their licence renewed, end up driving around the countryside with the guns in their cars because there is no garda in attendance and no written notice of when there might be one around.
"The guards don't even know the people any more. It's a breakdown of relations between the guards and the local communities and it's all about saving money."
Meanwhile, guns once reserved for shooting crows and the like are being turned to other uses. A man who had property stolen a few years ago brandished a gun in a recent confrontation with Traveller visitors.
"They took off when they saw that," says a neighbour. In recent weeks, some seven or eight miles from Cross, Travellers who pulled in to a lakeshore were warned off by a gunshot in the night, according to a man from Cross. "They were gone the next day. And something else - there's been no such thing as a break-in around here since last October. Make what you like of that."