A woman who hurled abuse against a neighbouring B&B owner recovering from a liver transplant, and whose wife was also suffering from cancer, in Killarney, Co Kerry, this summer was convicted of harassment and fined at Killarney District Court yesterday.
Mr Pat O'Connell said he was sitting in the garden of his B&B at Muckross Drive, Killarney, on the afternoon of June 4th last when Ms Christine McSweeney burst out the back door of her next door B&B. She told him to go in and talk to his "baldy wife", he claimed.
"My wife was after having cancer and had no hair," Mr O'Connell, who is himself recovering from a throat operation as well as a liver transplant, told the court.
Ms McSweeney also said his father was a drunkard "and so are you. That's how you lost your new liver and I hope you lose this one," Mr O'Connell said.
Guests were coming to his B&B and he was forced to go indoors because he was embarrassed.
On June 8th he was in his garden again. He had been advised by his doctors to sit in the fresh air as much as possible.
"I'm on anti-rejection tablets so I was in the shade," he said.
"She [Ms McSweeney] said 'go to Mass and pray for your wife's tit' - my wife had her breast removed in an operation," Mr O'Connell said.
He rang the Garda station in Killarney.
Ms McSweeney denied the charge of harassment and denied she had made derogatory comments. Instead she would testify that she said Mr O'Connell should go in and pray for his wife, her solicitor, Mr Maurice Coffey, said.
There had been "a history of rancour and ill feeling between the parties," he added.
Garda Peter McCarthy said that when he called to Ms McSweeney's house on June 8th he cautioned her and was told in reply the gardaí were "a crowd of abusers".
"As I passed the window she stuck up her two fingers and stuck out her tongue," Garda McCarthy said.
Over a week later, when he called to take a statement, she had flung a pen to be used for signing the statement against a table, the garda said in evidence.
"I did say go in and pray for his wife, not to be hassling me . . . he has been harassing me," Ms McSweeney told the court.
Judge Humphrey Kelleher convicted Ms McSweeney of harassment on a date unknown between June 4th and June 8th at Muckross Drive Killarney. He fined her €1,200.
Judge Kelleher also ordered that she was not to communicate with Mr O'Connell "by any means".