Back then to the lonely editorial in Village’s last edition which generated some hostility
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By Michael Smith published in partnership with the Ditch A former garda who was accused by his wife of serious domestic abuse and of holding a gun to her head at their family home in Donegal was awarded a Scott Medal at a ceremony attended by then acting justice minister and presidential candidate, Heather Humphreys, in September 2021. Former Detective Garda Noel McMahon resigned from the Garda in 2004 after the Morris Tribunal found that he was involved in planting “hoax bombs” and ammunition across the North-West in the early 1990s He and a senior Garda colleague then claimed these as IRA explosives-finds to advance their careers. McMahon purchased illicit drugs which were then placed in the premises of publican Frank Shortt in Quigley’s Point, in County Donegal in October 1994 before a large force of gardaí raided the nightclub. Shortt was charged with allowing his premises to be used for the sale of illegal drugs and, in 1995, was wrongly imprisoned for three years. He later obtained a miscarriage-of-justice certificate and substantial damages from the State. Judge Freddie Morris found that Noel McMahon had lied during his evidence to the tribunal. McMahon faced dismissal from the Garda before he resigned in July, 2004. At the Morris Tribunal hearings, Sheenagh McMahon described how she was subjected to serious abuse by her garda husband who threatened her with his official firearm at their home in Buncrana in 1995. “He put a gun to my head and he told me he would blow my brains out,” she told the Morris tribunal in March 2003 as she recounted the years of abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband. She said that she was wrongfully arrested after Noel McMahon produced a false court Safety Order made against her in 1999 and that her children were placed in care as a result of his actions. She later regained custody of her children and obtained an apology and damages from the State in 2018 over her wrongful arrest. In the apology, lawyers for the State, the Garda, the Minister for Justice and Noel McMahon said in open court that: “The Defendants concede liability on the basis that they accept that the Plaintiff was wrongfully arrested and detained on 30th June, 1999 by reason of the arresting Garda executing a Safety Order produced by the Plaintiff’s husband which in fact had never been issued by the District Court”. Ms McMahon was awarded €20,000 in damages. She refused an offer of an additional €5000 if she would agree to the apology not being read out in court. In its final report, the Morris Tribunal stated that Noel McMahon had threatened a garda colleague with a loaded gun in Buncrana garda station in 1992 and that “nothing was ever done about this incident”. In September 2021, Heather Humphreys, acting Minister for Justice, attended the ceremony during which serving and retired members, including McMahon, were awarded the Scott Medal for bravery during the rescue of businessman, Don Tidey in 1983, after his kidnapping by members of the IRA. Ms Humphreys and Commissioner Drew Harris, with Noel McMahon standing between them, were photographed along with other recipients of the award. The former minister and Fine Gael presidential candidate told those present: “Your actions on that day were truly heroic. You performed your duty as garda members and for that we are thankful. You are honoured with this exceptional award”.
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By Michael Smith If Éirígí were saying it now, the story might have some credence. They are not. Even in 2018, they absolutely did not say she was “a member” The Irish Times’ Ursula Ní Shionnain story is not journalism. It is character assassination. The trick turns on a single verb. In the article itself, the headline reads: “Éirígí said Ursula Ní Shionnain still member in 2018 when employed by Catherine Connolly in Leinster House” https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2025/10/02/eirigi-says-ursula-ni-shionnain-still-member-in-2018-when-employed-by-catherine-connolly-in-leinster-house/. But in the social preview — the snippet readers see when they share the link — it has: “Éirígí says Ursula Ní Shionnáin still member…”. That one word — ‘says‘ — transforms a stale fragment into a live scandal. If Éirígí were saying it now, the story might have some credence. It might be a real thing that Ursula Ní Shionnain could agree with or deny. They are not. Even in 2018, they absolutely did not say she was “a member”. All that exists is one phrase, describing a painting by “our own Ursula Ní Shionnain.” That is Éirígí claiming her symbolically, because she had been a member who had served time. It is not evidence of membership. Yet the Irish Times translated it into “still a member” without bothering to investigate if — as a matter of fact — she indeed had still been a member and projected it in the present tense. A non-story dressed up as something, even a scandal. The preview matters. The Irish Times boasts millions of monthly users of its stale and boring take on the world. And it is part of a wider pattern. Consider what happened to Catherine Connolly in the presidential debate. She had been meticulous: she did not compare Germans to Nazis. She used the word parallel, not “comparison”. Even the centrists in ‘The Rest in Politics’ did a feature in the last week on Germany, which is rearming against a background where the AfD is vying for first place in the polls. She avoided the word Nazi altogether. She knows Germany: she studied the language, lived there, and points simoly to the obvious fact that Germany today is the most striking case of rapid rearmament in Europe. Careful, informed, serious. Kieran Cuddihy’s question was loaded from the start: he asked if she was comparing the Labour Party’s German allies in the SPD to Nazis. Fair enough perhaps, Cuddihy was fairly even-handed and it was just a question. Where it got murky was when Harry McGee reported in the Irish Times that Connolly “did not directly respond”. That was false. Where it got murky was when Harry McGee reported in the Irish Times that Connolly “did not directly respond”. That was false. Village called it out on Twitter on 29 September: “Except that it is untrue that @CatherineGalway ‘did not directly respond to the question’. Connolly expressly denied she’d compared Germans to Nazis. Correction needed.” Twelve hours later, uncorrected, Village’s Twitter account sharpened the charge: “At the time it appeared like an inept mistake … 12 hours on and uncorrected … it begins to look like an untruth — the sort of smear @paulmurphy_TD has referred to and the Irish Times has been at pains to deny. @CatherineGalway traduced”. Two or three days later the piece was furtively changed. No acknowledgement of the mistake. No correction. Just the abject amendment. Th pattern is obvious. In one case, the Times twists tense to make Éirígí “say” something they’re not. In the other, it has Connolly ducking a question she in fact answered directly. Both distortions serve the same function: to smear someone more radical than the unserious Irish Times, to police the boundaries of political respectability. The Irish Times once styled itself the paper of record. It retains the smugness such a status would command but it can’t be bothered meeting the standard,. Record-keeping built on sly verbs, on false denials, on half-truths repeated until they pass for fact — that is not even journalism. It is, when in campaign mood, a paper of smear. A paper of tense little lies. Biased.
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Tradition betrayed by poor governance By Michael Smith Founded in 1823 in Dublin, the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts (RHA) was born from the ambition of 30 Irish artists who petitioned the Crown for a charter of incorporation. Early leaders were landscape painter William Ashford and architect Francis Johnston. By the end of the 19th century, the RHA stood as Ireland’s pre-eminent institution for promoting visual art. Over time, the Academy gained a reputation for conservatism, particularly in the early Free State years when it embraced a nationalist realism. It was in reaction to this that the Irish Exhibition of Living Art emerged in 1943 to champion modernism. The RHA’s original premises on Abbey St burnt in 1916 and it demolished its splendid replacement headquarters on Ely Place in the 1960s. A utilitarian new space was created there in the 1970s with financing from developer Matt Gallagher and a final design by Arthur Gibney RHA, friend of Charlie Haughey. Finally, after years of debt stress, in 2009 that space was upgraded to meet the RHA’s royal aspirations, and to include a well-regarded School. It would be difficult to say it has made for an institution that is integral to the cultural life of Ireland. The RHA is helmed for the moment by Abigail O’Brien, its first female President who was recognised with an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts in 2019, and was the recipient of a “Woman of the Year” award in the Arts from Irish Tatler; and by Patrick T Murphy, who remembers breaking into the gallery in the early 1980s when the building was a concrete hulk “just to look at the spaces inside because they were so great”. who has served as Director for 28 years. Murphy spent the early part of his career lecturing in the National College of Art and Design, returning to Dublin in 1998 after a decade at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and has long been due to retire in the autumn. O’Brien, whose brother is one of Ireland’s richest men, Denis O’Brien, has announced she will go around the same time. This article explains how relationships between these senior officers and the RHA’s board have collapsed as the protagonists make for the departure lounge. How it is supposed to work, and how it works in practice The Academy is a charity that receives core Arts Council funding and operates under a spiffy Royal Charter which was expensively rewritten a few years ago “for effect” but, according to insiders, without taking aim at deep structural problems. Formally, the Assembly — comprising the membership — meets four times a year and retains ultimate authority. In practice, the Council, meeting monthly with roughly 8–10 members (several have resigned in recent weeks), functions as the board under company law. The President, Treasurer, Secretary and Keeper sit on Council ex officio, as its officers. They are Dr Abigail O’Brien PRHA, Andrew Folan RHA, Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh RHA and Rachel Joynt RHA respectively. Without RHA after your name you will not go far in this berobed world. Several Council members and officers are now complaining that short tenures, blurred lines of accountability and a culture of informality have crystallised as dysfunction and stasis. Staff report no clear whistleblower route. Fundamental norms of good governance such as care with employment contracts, disciplinary processes and officers not employing staff, have not always been observed. The officers are not always responsive to their Council. There is inadequate guidance from the antique RHA’s bye-laws. Concentrated power The RHA now features an unusually concentrated executive: Patrick Murphy is not only CEO/Director but also in effect Curator which gives him leverage over the RHA’s ever-aspiring artist membership. Admirers describe him as dynamic and artist-focused, with teaching experience and a reputation for ‘looking after’ the staff of roughly twelve. Critics characterise him as a poor manager with lax procurement and informal hiring (“jobs for friends”) practices, and a demonstrated partial aversion to paperwork — he has himself, it is said, no standard employment contract, though he will have inferred rights by law, and little systematic expense oversight. He draws a notable salary of around €120,000. He refused to inform one stakeholder of the salaries of the employees of the RHA as he said he was taking care of that himself. He has grown arrogant and territorial over the years. Artists and employees alike are reluctant to challenge such a powerful CEO. Murphy’s long-standing alliance with President O’Brien figures frequently in dispatches. Sources say O’Brien has taken a leading hand in discussions about Murphy’s retirement package and a mooted “RHA West” role in Ballina, proposals some Council members considered to make insufficient logistical sense. Enter Sandra Hu Into this culture stepped Sandra Hu, who “sashayed” into the organisation via training in Beijing, New York, Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Trinity College Dublin as ‘front-of-house’ without job advertisement or interview like many before her. Her title and responsibilities shifted — part-time at front-of-house, then — with the benefit of contracts — development co-ordinator, front of house manager and head of sales to front of house manager and head of commerce. Through no fault of Hu’s, these roles sometimes overlapped with roles held by others, including the poor official Curator, whose job responsibility included sales. In a short period and without elementary process, Hu was catapulted from an entry level position to a prominent position with far-reaching responsibilities which, by all accounts, she discharged well. She was charismatic, ebullient and gregarious and she generated a stir and perhaps some jealousy. Colleagues describe her as efficient and hardworking, but increasingly critical of slippage in standards such as some RHA staff’s notoriously deficient starting hours. Hu felt she was not being rewarded for working overtime. She was pointedly excluded from several meetings and sidelined socially. There was an incident where Murphy publicly castigated Hu for bringing coffees to a Council meeting centring on whether O’Brien had paid for them as President. One curator formerly
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And in Ireland, which has pervasive problems with paedophile abuse and not just in swimming, that is the conversation that must be kept alive By Irvin Muchnick I panicked. “Out of sight, out of mind”, I said. But you heard me say it, you heard and listened — popular unconventional translation of Psalms, 31:22 Perhaps unsurprisingly, on 14 August, the media relations department of America’s ‘newspaper of record’ declined the invitation to tell Village that there will be any addition to its coverage four years ago of an Irish coach who had attained a dubious diversity lottery visa – which a federal judge suggested had been facilitated by the American Swimming Coaches Association – and who thereby traversed the country across three decades, despite having been rejected for citizenship. The reason being that he had lied on his application about his prior criminal indictment in Ireland. At least the New York Times is consistent. In March 2024, a 277-page congressional commission report, co-authored by sports law experts and Olympic legends such as track and field’s Edwin Moses, recommended restructuring the American youth sports system to stem the scourge of coach abuse. The Times has yet to inform readers of that report’s release and content, either. “We can’t and don’t cover every study, and do not comment on what may or may not publish in future editions”, said Times spokesperson Nicole Taylor. When I pointed out that the congressional commission report had been covered by the Washington Post, USA Today and other outlets, and was a thorough and much-anticipated fulfilment of a legislative mandate to offer the first significant reforms of America’s nearly-half-century-old Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, Taylor doubled down: “We can’t and don’t cover every study, and do not comment on what we may or may not publish in future editions. We’ve covered the issue of abuse and accountability in amateur, professional and Olympic sports with sensitivity and rigour”. According to the poet Wallace Stevens, there are thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird. When it comes to sexual abuse, there are only two. One is not to talk about it. The other is to talk about it. A list which shows the difficulties in bringing border-hopping coach predators to book In that spirit, Village submits for your consideration a list which shows the difficulties not just for law enforcement but for journalists in bringing border-hopping coach predators to book. Our list drops just as Michael Phelps, perhaps the greatest male swimmer ever, and other American Olympics legends are lambasting the leadership of USA Swimming in the wake of a tepid national team performance at the recent world championships. As Britain’s Guardian notes: “Notably, Phelps’s broadside does not directly address the most damaging area of USA Swimming’s recent history: its handling of sexual abuse, harassment and athlete safeguarding”. Rick Curl In the summer of 2012, an ex-swimmer, now living in Texas in her 40s, was watching the US Olympic Swimming Trials on television. The former Kelley Davies spotted on the pool deck a coach named Rick Curl. In abuse survivor vernacular, this sighting “triggered” her. She chose to speak out to the media, and in the aftermath Curl was banned by USA Swimming and incarcerated in Maryland state prison. Curl had been the founder and co-owner of one of the country’s largest and most prestigious swim programmes, out of several locations in the Washington, D.C., area. He began having sex with Davies, one of his top swimmers, when she was 12, and he molested her throughout her teen years. Around the time Kelley started swimming on an athletic scholarship at the University of Texas – at which point Curl also held the post of coach at the University of Maryland – her mother and father learned details and sought Curl’s prosecution. The Davies parents were advised that their evidence was less than iron-clad for that purpose, and that they should pursue civil action. They achieved a $150,000 financial settlement tied to that bête noire of transparency: a non-disclosure agreement or “NDA”. In utmost quiet, the University of Maryland dismissed Curl. He moved to Australia and coached with Carlile Swimming, the top programme in Sydney. By 2012, presumably calculating that the coast was again clear in the US, he returned to his eponymous club. David Berkoff is an American Hall of Fame swimmer who is rightly credited with being an early whistleblower on abuse. In 2010, about to run for the USA Swimming board as an insurgent, he had told another activist in an email: “Denying knowledge of Rick Curl, Mitch Ivey and others banging their swimmers! It’s a flat out lie. They knew about it because we (coaches and athletes) were all talking about it in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I was told by several of Mitch Ivey’s swimmers that he was sleeping with Lisa Dorman in 1988. I heard the whole Suzette Moran from Pablo Morales over a handful of beers and nearly threw up. I was told Rick Curl was molesting Kelley Davies for years starting when she was 12 by some of the Texas guys. That was the entire reason I formed the abuse subcommittee [at USA Swimming]. I was sick and tired of this crap. No one was standing up. No one was willing to take on these perverts”. When Davies noticed Curl at the 2012 Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, Berkoff was in the stands. By now he had been elected to the USA Swimming board as technical vice president. Anti-abuse activists who thought he was one of their own now were complaining he was a sellout who, once on the inside, was doing little about the problem in the sport’s higher councils. Berkoff defended himself in an interview with the Independent of Missoula, Montana. He said he had had no idea that Curl was coaching at the Trials. Berkoff also disavowed knowledge of Curl’s abuse of Davies. “I don’t know”, Berkoff said. “I heard rumours”. And so, in a rhetorical instant, the circle between “flat out lie” and “rumours” was squared. Alex Pussieldi Alex Pussieldi
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By Caroline Hurley Eloquent enforced absences The evening opened sombrely: the organisers, Cloughjordan Arts and Cloughjordan Palestine Justice informed the assembled crowd, nearly a hundred strong, that Abubaker Abed, the 22-year-old Gazan journalist who had only recently escaped the besieged enclave, would not be attending. His absence, however, was eloquent. News had just reached him of another death within his already devastated family—who remain trapped in Gaza, having already lost forty members to Israel’s annihilating assault. At a previous event, Abubaker had spoken with searing candour about the experience of hunger—not in the abstract, but as endured by himself and witnessed in those he loves. Once destined for a career as a sports commentator, he was drawn inexorably into the theatre of war, compelled to bear witness to horror. His reporting soon attracted the ire of Israeli authorities who warned that his work was becoming “troublesome”; targeted and threatened, he fled. The entry fees and donations from the event were dedicated to supporting him. A musical performance by members of the Lajee cultural tour from the Ayda Refugee Camp in Bethlehem had also been planned, but the now-familiar obstacle of delayed visas rendered their presence impossible. In their absence, a candle was lit, and the room fell into a moment of mindful silence — an act of collective mourning and solidarity. The machinery of dispossession in the West Bank An update was shared on the ongoing wave of evictions and systematic land theft in the West Bank. The tactics of displacement were laid bare: obstruction of harvests, mass sackings, and bureaucratic sabotage that forces Palestinians to complete Kafkaesque documentation in order to prove ownership of their own homes. Access to neighbourhoods is denied through strategically placed street gates; arbitrary detentions proliferate. At the heart of these efforts lies a relentless Israeli ambition to seize full control over Land Registry Area C. https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/34008a8c7d3446789674bc79f59d9477_18.jpeg Since June, under what can only be described as an imposed lockdown, over 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced in just 100 days. One fifth of the West Bank is now designated a military firing zone. Amid this devastation, one beacon of practical resistance remains the Union of Agriculture Workers Committee (UAWC). Trusted by both sides, though not unscathed — their seed bank was damaged in a bombing — UAWC personnel continue to provide water, food, shelter, and building materials to those in greatest need. The international solidarity movement (see: International Solidarity Movement) has witnessed a recent resurgence, particularly across social media platforms. Its Irish counterpart, Pals for Palestine (Pals for Palestine Ireland), has emerged as a growing force. Audrey Kissane: mainstream media’s complicity Audrey Kissane took to the floor with quiet force, introduced as a rare voice in Irish journalism—one unafraid to expose the complicity of mainstream media, not through overt distortion, but by the more insidious method of silence. An independent journalist and media reform advocate, Kissane has garnered wide publication for her work—especially her trenchant critiques of national broadcaster RTÉ’s reporting on Palestine. Her talk was titled with sharp irony: ‘RTÉ: Covering Genocide or Covering Up?’. Kissane’s central contention was stark: in its quest for “balance”, RTÉ has deliberately downplayed the scale of overwhelmingly one-sided Israeli violence. Journalism, she argued, must be the vanguard of truth — not its obfuscation. While even figures like Taoiseach Micheál Martin have acknowledged the likelihood of genocide, RTÉ continues to equivocate, lagging behind even traditionally cautious outlets like The New York Times. She cited mounting evidence—from legal experts, human rights organisations, and damning statements by Israeli officials like Smotrich, Netanyahu, and Ben-Gvir (all now wanted by the ICC). In June 2025, a study linked to Harvard revealed that nearly 400,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been “disappeared” since 7 October 2023 — half of them children. “Framing”, Kissane explained, “erases victims by painting them as Hamas terrorists”. RTÉ’s editorial loyalties, she argued, appear to lie more with the Israeli narrative and its American backers, such as the CIA, than with international humanitarian law. Worse still, their sources are frequently subject to Israeli military censorship — restrictions never declared to their audience. Such concealment, she insisted, is not merely dishonest but a betrayal of democratic ideals. An absence of effective regulatory oversight has allowed these practices to go unchecked. When questioned, Ireland’s media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, offered only a generic reply claiming such matters were “outside their remit” — an astounding abdication, especially given its European responsibilities. Kissane condemned the media’s blatant asymmetries in humanisation. Israeli hostages are afforded detailed, empathetic coverage—names, familial context, psychological insights — while Palestinian detainees are rendered faceless, often not even named, and rarely acknowledged as victims of arbitrary detention. The United Nations, she noted, has sounded the alarm on a new Israeli law allowing life sentences for children as young as twelve. Such normalisation of propaganda, Kissane warned, constitutes a crisis of democratic representation. “What should be a critical inflexion point for Ireland is largely ignored”. She referenced The Ditch’s reporting on Israeli intelligence operatives such as Inbal Goldberger and their secretive meetings with Irish ministers, including Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, where strategies were discussed for incorporating the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism into the regulation of international tech companies operating in Ireland. Micheál Martin’s dismissive reaction to The Ditch — a well-regarded independent outlet — was symptomatic of a broader tactic: to frame transparency seekers as “bullies”, a rhetorical sleight-of-hand bordering on corruption. Goldberger’s influence reportedly extends to the review of Irish school textbooks, urging that narratives of oppression be softened to serve future pro-Israeli historiography. The Chair of the Jewish Representative Council, Maurice Cohen, is likewise a regular figure in hate-speech discussions, including in relation to the Occupied Territories Bill. Despite frequent accusations of anti-Israel bias by Ambassador Dana Erlich, Kissane reminded the audience that President Michael D Higgins has publicly refuted the claim that Ireland has a problem with antisemitism. The IHRA definition adopted recently by this government, she warned, dangerously discourages accurate references to Israeli aggression. RTÉ’s
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‘In the round, Martin may have done more than any of his contemporaries to address miscarriages of justice in Ireland’ Martin Giblin, Senior Counsel, doyen of cases challenging Irish miscarriages of justice is dead too young, at 73. Abroad, I often feel like the character in Cinema Paradiso (1988), who is informed of the death of a mentor—and, in effect, the slow passing of what I regard as a more innocent, principled, and better Irish generation. Martin Giblin SC, along with my good friend and instructing solicitor Paul McNally, Paul Callan SC who led a number of important cases on sovereignty and the independence of Ireland’s foreign policy, including Crotty and McKenna, and the leading EIA environmental case, Lancefort. The great Adrian Hardiman, who rose to the Supreme Court in the end, too was part of a diminishing “band of brothers” in the Law Library. Their work was frequently motivated by justice and civic duty. In the round, Martin may have done more than any of his contemporaries to address miscarriages of justice in Ireland. Martin grew up in a working-class area in a family of modest means. An academically gifted older brother was withdrawn from secondary school for economic reasons. The introduction of the third-level grant scheme, just as Martin was finishing school, enabled him to progress to university and the King’s Inns — an achievement that would have seemed unlikely earlier in his life. At university, he encountered an upper-middle-class world marked by snobbery and disdain for the working class. In the 1970s, he championed the cause of women who defied the exclusionary traditions of ‘men only’ bars, taking on pubs that brazenly refused to serve female customers and challenging the renewal of their licences with quiet but determined fury. In the late 1970s, he acted as a junior barrister for Osgur Breatnach after brutal framing by the Garda Heavy Gang in the infamous Sallins Train Robbery Case. Ministers of Justice have indulged this injustice ever since, with the latest refusal of a Citizens’ Petition from every human rights organisation in Ireland and Fair Trial International for a public inquiry into the case. Giblin secured the overturning of Breatnach’s conviction but the State refused to compensate him. His co-accused Nicky Kelly was released on “humanitarian grounds” in 1984, and later received a Presidential pardon and compensation. Breatnach is still seeking a declaration of miscarriage of justice: after 40 years. Infamously the Special Criminal Court, in addition to pretending to believe fabricated confessions and ignoring perjured evidence of Garda brutality, ignored the fact that one of their own was asleep on the bench during the trial. By comparison, the behaviour of today’s American courts seems almost sane. This case shaped Martin’s future. It made him beloved of the downtrodden and despised by the ruling elite. Breatnach told Village: “Martin received an objective life-lesson on injustice, the Irish Courts and the law when he ably advised me as a junior barrister in the Sallins Case, in what was to become the longest criminal trial in Irish history. He never forgot the lessons therein. He continued to pick the side of the marginalised for the rest of his life. At a personal price”. Decades later, Giblin stood at the forefront of one of Ireland’s most harrowing public inquiries—the Lindsay Tribunal—serving as a senior figure in the legal team representing the Irish Haemophilia Society. The tribunal, launched in 1999, probed the heartbreaking scandal in which haemophiliacs were infected with hepatitis C and HIV through tainted blood products distributed by the state’s own Blood Transfusion Service. Though we were of different generations, outlooks, and backgrounds, Martin and I shared a complete distrust of the Garda. In his case, he saw little good in them — or in the state officials, barristers, and judges whose careers were tied to Garda patronage. He lamented judicial appointments rising through the prosecutor ranks — cognitively biased and agency-captured from the outset, not least those with extreme religious views. Discretion prevents me naming names, but you know who I mean. He was a defence lawyer par excellence. That generation is fading now, replaced and marginalised in a country knee-deep in corruption, authoritarianism, state-sponsored surveillance and murder—and perhaps anarchy. His historic representation of the McBreartys is legendary—a sustained campaign to expose framing by malice and incompetence. He acted for Frank McBrearty Junior following the false identification of him and his cousin Mark McConnell as the main suspects concerning the 1996 death of a cattle dealer, Richie Barron. It spawned the Morris Tribunal. Frank McBrearty Junior told Village: “It would take three books to explain Martin Giblin SC and what he did for us when we were challenging the corrupt State and Garda and the useless Morris tribunal. He was my mentor, teacher, left and right hand—especially during my fight for justice at the useless [he actually said corrupt] Morris Tribunal. An ordinary man with an exceptional IQ, Martin helped us take on the might of the Irish Free State. He knew it was a cover-up and wasn’t afraid to act on it”. Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum — “Let justice be done though the heavens fall”. McBrearty says: “It is the Latin proverb Martin taught me that I live by. It’s tattooed on my forearm in Celtic script. Every time I look at it, I remember Martin and our battle against a corrupt State and police force who tried to frame us for a murder that never happened”. He was a Rumpolean thorn in the establishment’s side—and proud of it. He wore his notoriety like a badge of honour or a war wound, and was happy, over breakfast, to offer detailed explanations of corruption too extreme for publication. Collegiality, at least on the surface, had to be maintained. Martin was an expert in extradition law. His representation of Ian Bailey—also supported by my friend Jim Sheridan—stands in stark contrast to the idiotic and sub-literate sentiment expressed on that matter by Taoiseach Martin. His championing of Bailey, where in 2012
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In Gaza, dreams
Resilience among the rubble By Eman Abu Zayed On the night of October 6 2023, I laid out my clothes for university like I always did neatly folded on the chair next to my bed. I packed my bag with books, charged my phone, and set my alarm for 6:30 a.m. Earlier that day, I had been laughing with my friends on campus. We talked about our classes, shared silly jokes, and promised to catch up again the next morning. Nothing felt unusual. It was just another ordinary day. But I didn’t wake up to the sound of my alarm. I woke up to the sound of rockets. By morning, everything had changed and my life would never be the same again By morning, everything had changed and my life would never be the same again. From the very first moment, I felt like the life I knew had ended. Suddenly, there was no water, no electricity, and no signal. It was like we had been thrown back hundreds of years, living in complete darkness. The borders were shut, the phone lines were dead, and we had no way to check on our families or friends. Sometimes we’d hear the bombing loud, close but we couldn’t tell where it had hit. We only knew it was too close. The airstrikes were terrifying in a way we had never experienced before. The ground shook beneath us, and everything felt black and silent. No news, no voices, no safety. I was sitting at my neighbour’s house, with my friend Dima, when the tanks started shelling the upper floors of the building we lived in. The entire tower shook, and I ran toward our apartment, desperately trying to find my family, terrified something might have happened to them. We all gathered in one room my aunt, my cousins, and the rest of us trying to shield ourselves from the explosions, holding our breaths with every blast. But the shelling didn’t stop. The upper floors were hit again, and we had no choice but to flee into the street. What we saw outside felt like the Day of Judgment. People were running in every direction, screaming, crying, chaos everywhere. Smoke filled the air. Tanks were closing in on the neighbourhood, and bullets were flying from every side. It was one of the most terrifying days of my life. We whispered the shahada dozens of times in a single minute. We walked for what felt like over a thousand meters, and the sound of shelling still echoed behind us. My father was pushing my grandmother in her wheelchair, and I was holding my little brother’s hand tightly as we ran through the street, not knowing where we were going or where we could possibly be safe. Eventually, we found a house nearby that belonged to relatives. We took shelter there. More than sixteen of us crowded into a single room. There was no privacy, no comfort but we had no choice. This was now our reality. The shelling grew closer and closer, and the bullets from Israeli quadcopters began hitting the walls of the house we were staying in. That’s when we made the decision to flee again this time to a tent in Rafah, in what they called the “humanitarian zones”. I had only ever seen tents in movies or read about them in camping stories. I never imagined one would become my home even temporarily. But we had no other choice. We gathered whatever belongings we could carry and headed to Rafah. There, we began setting up tents. The sun was blazing, the air unbearably hot, and there was no water. Still, we tried to finish building the tent before nightfall, just so we could have somewhere to sleep. That night, twenty-eight of us slept in a single tent. We were still trying to adapt to life in the tent, telling ourselves it was temporary, holding on to any sense of routine or stability. Then came the devastating news: our home had been bombed. But when I say “our home was bombed”, I don’t just mean the walls came down. Everything was gone. Not only was our house destroyed, but so was my father’s goldsmith workshop it was on the ground floor. That news hit us like a punch to the chest. We broke down in tears, unable to believe it, hoping somehow it was a mistake. How could the house I had lived in for twenty-two years disappear in the blink of an eye? How could my room, the memories, the laughter, the photos on the walls, and my childhood bed be gone? Everything was lost the house, the workshop, and a piece of my heart with them. Then came the news that shattered my heart completely: Rama had been killed. Rama wasn’t just anyone she was my closest friend at university, my favourite person, the one who knew me better than anyone else. We shared everything: lectures, long talks between classes, our fears, and our dreams. Losing her felt like losing a part of myself. At the time, there was no communication. I had no idea what was happening in the north. My friend Rawaan sent me a message telling me that Rama was gone, but I didn’t receive it until two days later because the network was down and sending messages was nearly impossible. I couldn’t believe it. I cried and screamed, unable to grasp the loss. I never got the chance to say goodbye. Rama was one of the few who refused to evacuate. She chose to stay in the north enduring hunger, bombing, and humiliation but she stood her ground. She stood… and then she was killed, along with her sister Ruba, who used to share her room, her nights, and her laughter. Even in death, they weren’t separated they were buried together in the same grave. I never got to see her. I never even got to hear her voice. This war has taken everything from
