Garda suspended over alleged bid to hire person to kill former partner
A member of the Garda is under investigation on suspicion he tried to hire a person online to carry out an arson attack on the home of his former partner while she was present.
It is alleged the Garda member wanted the woman to be killed in the fire.
The investigation, which is being carried out by the Garda's Anti-Corruption Unit, is focused on communications on the darknet sent by a person based in Ireland to another darknet user who was supposedly offering to carry out violent attacks for payment.
However, while a sum of bitcoin was paid to the person offering violence as a service, they then ceased communication with the darknet user based in Ireland. The bitcoin, a relatively modest sum, was lost in what appears to have been a scam.
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The darknet is essentially a secretive and covert part of the internet – a private network – where all users go by pseudonyms.
In response to queries, Garda Headquarters confirmed a member of the force had been suspended but made no further comment on the continuing investigation or the precise nature of the inquiry.
'As part of an ongoing investigation being conducted by the Garda Anti-Corruption Unit into alleged serious criminality, a garda based in Dublin is suspended from duty,' it said.
The Irish Times understands detectives began a criminal investigation into the alleged plot to pay for a fatal arson attack after receiving a tip-off about activity between two parties on the darknet.
Even though the darknet user who believed they were paying for an arson attack to be carried out fell victim to a scammer, the messages they sent, trying to organise an attack, appeared to be genuine. While the Garda member under investigation has been suspended from duty, he has not been arrested and no findings have been reached against him.
Because the efforts to solicit a violent attack in exchange for payment were made on the darknet, the case poses technical challenges. Gardaí must first investigate if the Garda member authored and sent the messages rather than another party.
It was not until the technical aspects of the investigation were complete that any arrests could be made. However, the matter is being treated as a priority case and the investigation was expected to progress quickly.
Establishing the identity or location of darknet users is much more difficult compared with the conventional internet. Users access the darknet via a special browser, rather than the mainstream routes such as Microsoft Edge or Chrome.
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Irish Times
34 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Persecution of Irish Catholics led to foundation of Irish Francisan landmark in Rome
This week marks the 400th anniversary of St Isidore's College in Rome as an Irish Franciscan landmark and Ireland's national church in the city. On June 13th 1625, Waterford man and Franciscan priest Fr Luke Wadding signed a contract taking over the building and, during the following week his Irish brother Franciscans moved in. They've been there since. At the time, Catholics faced severe persecution in Ireland leading to a multitude of Irish Colleges emerging across Europe, including St Isidore's, to provide formation for exiled Irish clergy. St Isidore's origins are shared by Ireland with Spain, as reflected in the sculptures of two saints on the building's Rococo facade: St Isidore of Madrid and St Patrick of Ireland. READ MORE It began in 1622 when a group of Spanish discalced Franciscans founded a convent dedicated to the newly canonised Isidore, a farmer and holy man from the 11th century. However, they soon ran into debt and had to abandon their incomplete home, near Piazza Barberini. Fr Wadding, living in Rome at the time, offered to take over St Isidore's on condition he could turn it into a seminary to train Irish Franciscan priests for service in Ireland. In addition to completing the church, he enlarged the building – originally designed to house 12 men – to accommodate 60 friars. Within five years he had paid off debts accumulated by the Spanish, through donations from benefactors which included Pope Urban VIII. Although it retained the name of the Spanish saint from Madrid, Fr Wadding was keen to underline the Irishness of the new college, as evidenced by the frescoes of Ireland's patron saints – Patrick and Bridget – on either side of the entrance to the church, beneath old Irish script from an 8th century text. Restorers from the Italian Ministry of Culture recently discovered that the fresco of St Patrick was initially beardless, in keeping with early iconography of the saint. Current guardian of St Isidore's, Fr Mícheál Mac Craith, said adding the beard was Fr Wadding's way of presenting Patrick to the Vatican 'as an Irish Moses, a patriarchal figure. So, the beard added that necessary gravitas.' A large fresco in the college's Aula Magna depicts scholars at St Isidore's studying in the library, with a long Latin inscription underneath asserting that the Irish nation, destroyed at home by Cromwell, was being recreated in Rome through the scholarship of Irish Franciscan exiles. A recent five-month restoration of the Patrick and Bridget frescoes was completed just in time for St Patrick's Day last March, when the city's Irish community crowded into St Isidore's beautiful church. At Mass that morning, Fr Mac Craith paid tribute to Fr Wadding for his role in founding St Isidore's but also for his crucial part in establishing Ireland's national day in 1631. He noted how 'up to then St Patrick was just a local Irish saint. But Wadding insisted and prevailed on the Vatican to mandate that the feast of St Patrick be celebrated all over the world and not just at home: from Derry to Dubrovnik, from Limerick to Lesotho, from Roscommon to Rwanda.' Fr Mac Craith also pointed out that 'with its verses in Old Irish, St Isidore's is the only church in Rome that uses its vernacular language in its portico. It would seem that when Wadding came here, he wanted to make a very strong statement: `this is an Irish establishment'.' Prof emeritus of Modern Irish at the University of Galway, Fr Mac Craith believes the prominent depictions of Patrick and Bridget also served to make the point that: 'Ireland is a separate kingdom; it has its own saints and its own language: the Irish have come to town.' Fr Wadding can also take credit for St Isidore's church being home to stunning examples of 17th-century Italian art, achieved by hiring the best Roman artists of the day with financial assistance from Spanish patrons. As part of a long-standing tradition, the St Patrick's Day Mass in Rome is presided over each year by the rector of Rome's Irish College, which Fr Wadding founded in 1628 for the training of diocesan priests. He accomplished all of this within a decade of arriving in Rome in 1618, at the age of 30, following studies in Lisbon. His arrival in the Eternal City came about after King Philip III of Spain chose him as theological adviser to a delegation sent to petition Pope Paul V to define the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that Mary was born without original sin on her soul. The mission failed and the royal delegation returned to Spain, but Fr Wadding stayed on in Rome where he would spend the rest of his life. He also never lost sight of the reason for his original mission and his work would prove fundamental to the eventual definition of the Immaculate Conception as a dogma of the Catholic Church in 1854. Fr Wadding, who served as rector at St Isidore's for 30 years, was also Ireland's first ever accredited ambassador. In 1642, the Confederation of Kilkenny appointed him as their representative in Rome. He died on November 18th 1657, aged 69 and is buried in the crypt at St Isidore's. Andy Devane is editor of the monthly magazine Wanted in Rome. This is an edited version of an article he wrote and published in the magazine to mark the 400th anniversary of the Irish Franciscans at St Isidore's.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Air rage rising: from insults to sexual comments and assault, ‘it's getting completely out of hand'
The worst experience that Sinéad Whiston has ever had on a flight was when a passenger was 'verbally abusive and trying to damage the aircraft'. 'It was a 4¼-hour flight spent trying to de-escalate someone's behaviour the whole time. I was counting down the clock all the way to Dublin so that we could just get this person off the aircraft,' she says. Whiston, a senior member of cabin crew with Aer Lingus , spoke to The Irish Times on Wednesday, the day before Ryanair announced it would in future fine passengers who have to be 'offloaded' from one of their aircraft €500. The company is already suing a passenger for €15,000 after a flight bound for Lanzarote in the Canary Islands last year had to be diverted to Porto. Those on board were forced to overnight in the Portuguese city. READ MORE The company says the wider problem is getting worse, with drugs and alcohol increasingly factors. [ Ryanair demands two-drink limit for passengers at airports Opens in new window ] Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary recently lamented that drunken passengers didn't simply get on board and fall asleep because drugs are often part of the mix and they are 'much more energised or aggressive'. The number of serious incidents dealt with in the first five months of this year by An Garda Síochána at Dublin Airport has increased to 32. This is three times what it was in the same period in 2020, and more than for the entirety of last year . Sinéad Whiston at Dublin Airport. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill At Ballymun Garda station, which has responsibility for the airport, Supt Darren McCarthy lists the sorts of offences people are typically charged with, including abusive behaviour, obstructing a Garda and assault. The common factor, he says, is intoxication, an offence in itself on a passenger aircraft. 'They're all related to alcohol or drugs – well, more than 90 per cent of them,' he says. The most common illegal drug involved is cocaine 'which is across society', he says. A large proportion of the people who cause the most serious issues on flights have taken cocaine, alcohol or prescription medication, or some combination of the three, he says. 'They could be on ordinary medication for depression or anything like that. They could be mixing drugs with tablets, with alcohol, and then they get this reaction even they don't understand,' he says. The majority of those arrested are first-time offenders, many of whom might not have considered themselves capable of the behaviour. Retired judge Patrick Durcan, who dealt with cases from Shannon Airport when based in Co Clare, recalls Ralph Lauren's niece, Jennifer, appearing before him in 2014. She faced charges of being intoxicated on a New York-bound flight that had to divert to Shannon, and was fined €2,000. The case of Cranberries singer, the late Dolores O'Riordan , who pleaded guilty to a number of air rage-related offences while on a flight from New York in 2015, he recalls as 'very sad'. He also remembers 'an English passenger who thought the seat belt might make a nice present and tried to bring it with him before being nabbed'. 'They tended to be quite individual cases,' he says of those he encountered, 'a lot of them involving people who were overcome with drink, or drugs or tiredness.' Cabin crew member Angel Garcia Whiston's Aer Lingus colleague Angel Garcia recalls an incident in which a passenger overdosed, apparently on CBD gummies – cannabidiol (CBD) is an active ingredient in cannabis – and lost consciousness just before take-off on a flight from the United States, where they are legal. 'We had to deliver first aid and get them looked after by paramedics on the ground. But this was on a long-haul flight. We were so lucky we caught it on the ground,' he says. The one time Garcia was assaulted, he says, he was lucky it was in Europe – but the incident raised other issues. 'I was walking on the cabin aisle, and this passenger, she had been problematic. It was a woman. It was in relation to drink. 'Now we have techniques we are trained in to de-escalate a situation, to try and get people to be reasonable, to understand their behaviour could have a lot of consequences, that they're not the only one on board. But at that stage, we had already been through the de-escalation and it wasn't working out. 'Eventually, I was walking down the cabin aisle and she slapped my ass. I said: 'Excuse me, that is really not appropriate.' 'What she said to me was – and sorry, this is very descriptive – 'I'm sure if I had a dick in between my legs, you wouldn't have an issue'. 'At that stage, you're left in a situation where you're like: 'What do I do now?' You're up in the air. At 35,000ft.' Garcia and Whiston, both of whom represent other cabin crew as committee members of the trade union Fórsa , say their training is excellent, with much more emphasis on the issues involved than when they started in the industry, 11 and 18 years ago respectively. Garcia began his career with Ryanair ; Whiston with a charter airline. That the problem of abuse is now being so prioritised, says Whiston, is an indication of how it has evolved and grown in recent years. Some of what cabin crew are taught, and subsequently learn on the job, is about spotting potential problems before they happen. 'It's not common knowledge,' she says, 'but it is illegal to be intoxicated on an aircraft. So if you're coming down a jet bridge and you're intoxicated, you're not flying today because we don't want to take that problem into the sky.' When the cabin crew are smiling and welcoming passengers on-board, they are weighing up who might prove to be an issue. It can quickly change from a point when 'everyone's smiling, everything's fine to behaviour suddenly becoming a problem in the sky. That's when we can have challenges.' For all of that, she says, '99.9 per cent of passengers are absolutely lovely,' but that tiny minority, says Garcia, are 'a massive issue' – one that's getting 'completely out of hand'. Things are not helped, he says, by the fact staff are conscious in every instance that their handling of a situation will be filmed by other passengers and posted on social media. Their full-time union official, Lisa Connell, says members tell, most commonly, of being verbally abused, ignored when giving instructions or disrespected. Stories of being spat at or assaulted also come up. The airlines, she says, are supportive, although there can be longer-term impacts on staff, including stress. They take the incidents seriously and tend to pursue cases where possible. Supt McCarthy says better reporting and more collaboration, including the release of staff for court appearances, has helped An Garda Síochána to pursue culprits, with almost all serious incidents on flights coming into Dublin leading to prosecutions. Outbound flights can be a different story. Jurisdictional issues often lead to offenders, many of them Irish, simply being let go by local police, the scenario that prompted Ryanair to take a civil action in the wake of the Porto incident. [ Ryanair seeks €15,000 in damages from passenger over alleged 'inexcusable' behaviour that disrupted flight Opens in new window ] 'They said: 'Look, we're not going to pursue this,' and we said: 'We're not going to settle for that, we'll take our own case,'' says the airline's director of communications, Jade Kirwan. 'It is less about kind of recouping the cost and more about setting an example.' The costs can be very considerable. A decade ago United Airlines put the cost of diverting a flight between Amsterdam and Chicago to Belfast, after a hungry passenger demanded more snacks, at £350,000 – much of it down to the 50,000 litres of fuel that had to be dumped before the plane landed. Ryanair operates about 3,500 flights carrying 630,000 passengers each day across Europe. Kirwan says its staff have to deal with a seriously disruptive passenger on average in three of every 1,000 flights. The figure is slightly above the international industry one but is also more up to date. 'It's a huge issue caused by a tiny handful of people but the ripple effect is phenomenal for passengers, for crew, for the wider operation,' she says. Many of the incidents start innocently enough, says Kirwan. 'A few scoops, then my flight's delayed an hour, two hours, and then they're sitting in the bar because there's nothing else to do. And then by the time it gets to the flight, it kind of escalates. 'Typically, you'll see it on the likes of flights to Tenerife, Ibiza, hen destinations, stag destinations, sometimes around sporting events and stuff, but it's not exclusive in to them in any way. It is across the board.'
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Landlords rail against rent control reforms
Pity the Government as they try to juggle the competing interests of tenants and landlords while looking to inject new vigour into a flagging housebuilding programme . Tenants rights groups and Opposition public representatives have been quick to criticise the package of measures announced earlier this week that will from next year ease rules on rent rises on new tenancies in rent pressure zones that will now extend the length of the State. Yes, they have also tried to firm up some tenants' rights, but there is a clear understanding that the changes were driven by the need to encourage investment by private sector landlords. So the landlords are presumably happy? Not a bit of it. READ MORE The Irish Property Owners Association (IPOA) – the landlord industry body – says it has 'grave concerns that the upcoming changes will overwhelmingly harm rental supply and drive private landlords out of the market'. In particular, it is not happy that landlords will be classified by tenancies rather than properties, so they could be seen as having multiple tenancies in a shared house or a building divided into separate living units. The issue here is that anyone with four or more tenancies will be seen as a large landlord and thus barred from 'no fault' evictions. Will rent reform make building apartments viable? Listen | 40:12 The IPOA also warns that property values could slump 40 per cent if they are obliged to sell without ousting tenants – a restriction, it says, undermines landlords' property rights. While the new rules strip out the 2 per cent cap on rent rises, regardless of inflation, this is limited only to new tenancies after the rules come into force next year. That, landlords say, is likely to lead to 'economic evictions' and landlord exits from the market where those rents are significantly below the market rate. IPOA chairwoman Mary Conway, who also, predictably, rails against expanding the rent pressure zone concept State-wide, says: 'The new legislative environment could exacerbate housing insecurity for many vulnerable renters.' Tenants will equally argue that the additional tiering of the rental market will only make their lives more complex and uncertain. And allowing more room to increase rents that are already unaffordable for many hardly seems to be the vote-getter the Government would presumably hope it is. It seems that, in looking to be seen as even-handed, the Government runs the risk of exacerbating issues in a market that is already seen as failing to deliver for either side.
