Cian Ó Concubhair
@cianoconcubhair
Lectures criminal law, policing & criminology @ Maynooth University Research: policing, media, crime, legitimacy & trust, power & resistance Views personal Sé/é Dublin via da Banner
There are many examples of what Paulie Doyle highlights here that I've observed over the years But the one that comes to mind most immediately is Robert Hennessy, a member of the murkier parts of our state security apparatus Who avoided conviction for a very violent assault
Government jet? GOVERNMENT JET?!? HE SHOULD BE SLUMMING IT ON RYANAIR This Government has clearly lost touch with the people www.rte.ie/news/2026/08...
A good illustration of the judicial branch's understanding of the world outside the courts... www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-n...
Attitude to SF very funny here That red block must be all the old Labour party voters who were a bit grossed out by 2011-2015 but who still hate republicans
Evidence of misappropriate of public funds? I imagine given the much-repeated (yet light on evidence) claim that solicitors are routinely abusing the criminal legal aid system This revelation will result in unilateral contract changes reducing Garda pay www.rte.ie/news/2026/08...
Don't get me wrong I am in favour of civil forfeiture But the fawning news reporting on CAB frames it as an exceptional Irish innovation (it's not – done elsewhere long before 1996) And highly effective (hmmm...) Annual budget for CAB is just under €13 million...
That's right Roads have become more lethal for children and everyone else Yet Gardaí are spending more time prosecuting people for personal drug possession...
In a context where road deaths have been increasing year-on-year This is not the correct interpretation to make of the figures A more likely interpretation is a reduction in Garda enforcement www.rte.ie/news/2026/07...
The Irish Times is publishing disinformation from An Garda Síochána Disinformation that was offered up by Garda reps to the Joint Oireachtas Committee And flatly contradicted by the evidence JFC – would ye even bother reading your own copy on this... www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...
Further evidence If it was ever needed Of why it's a terrible idea for academics to be given (or to take) regular news columns To embarrass themselves pontificating about matters in which they are ignorant Was decriminalisation of suicide "normalisation"
When your conception of the world is all the common law jurisdictions... From the Irish Times of course lol
This reminds me of the Supreme Court majority's rationale for maintaining criminalisation of homosexuality in Norris v AG Which boiled down to, if we decriminalise homosexuality there'd be no more children as all the men would only ride each other
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary Evidence that has been examined in exceptional detail by the Citizens' Assembly and two Joint Oireachtas Committees The IMO's position is that actually the War on Drugs works www.rte.ie/news/politic...
The propensity of members of Government like the Minister for Justice here And members of An Garda Síochána before the Joint Oireachtas Committee (who made similar wildly incorrect claims) To trot out misinformation like this Is really incredible www.rte.ie/news/politic...
The background to this particular recommendation Which absorbed some of my time before the committee Is an example of the misinformation efforts by some of the State representatives that were before the committee Similar efforts were made with the Citizens' Assembly
In February this year Senior Gardaí went before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Drug Use And suggested that people were only really prosecuted for personal drug possession if Gardaí knew (but had no evidence) they were dealing...
While reduction in firearm homicides is not to be ignored AGS flatters the Irish state in terms of homicide rates by excluding motoring-related homicides from homicide statistics If you include those, the homicide rate is rising rte.ie/news/2026/05...
Early in @younghorgan.bsky.social's BBC Sounds series Stakeknife He speaks to ITV journalists who were approached by Scappaticci on a confidential basis (they didn't know who he was) They described having a British army handler in another car observing who they were meeting...
Mediahuis's advertising for the Sunday World rebrand is... Provocative I guess there's an economic argument to be made for encouraging people to enter the world of norm non-compliance if you're business is reporting on it
One of the extraordinary features of the Irish Coroners' Courts system is that Gardaí are actively involved in recruiting jurors – sometimes off the street The Gov made a specific exception for the second Stardust Inquest: www.oireachtas.ie/en/bills/bil... But that was a once-off
Curiously this story is absent from news organisations that enthusiastically employed Israel's genocide-denying propaganda term "Hamas-run health ministry" News organisations like @news.rte.ie
The Brits pioneered militarised policing in the ever-useful colonial laboratory that was/is Ireland Americans learned lessons from those experiments And it's not like policing doesn't look like that here anymore
I was looking for something else last night and was reminded of this incident from a number of years ago... www.theguardian.com/business/201...
Early contender for splash of the year Superb stuff Story by @mickthehack.bsky.social – don't know who the clever sub who came up with the pun was though
This is the report that deals with the Garda investigation into how Conor Lally found out about the court case I cannot see how telling a journalist that a Garda is being prosecuted in public court contravenes s62 of the 2005 Act www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/20...
Margaret Loftus is correct to fear her abuser will not be dismissed with a s2 conviction I wonder if Robert Hennessy will even face disciplinary measures We certainly will never be told, given he is drawn from the shady security side of AGS... www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/20...