Latest news with #O'Dwyer
Irish Independent
3 days ago
- Irish Independent
Man who threatened to shoot garda and spat blood in patrol car has jail term overturned on appeal
Thomas McDonagh (23) with a last address at St Margaret's Park, Ballymun, Dublin made threats to a garda member's life and repeatedly squirted Lucozade at him. McDonagh had pleaded not guilty in the District Court to four charges including failure to comply with a garda member under section 8 of the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act, 1994, obstruction of a peace officer under section 19 of the act and threatening and abusive behaviour under section 6 of the same act. He also faced a charge for the criminal damage of a garda car under section 2(1) of the Criminal Damage Act 1991. He was convicted of all four charges and given a sentence of six months in custody, a term against which he later appealed. Garda Pierce O'Dwyer told the District Court Appeals Court on Monday that he responded to a call at St Margaret's Park in Ballymun on May 12, 2023. He said that gardaí were surrounded by ten to 12 men who were demanding that they leave and were acting aggressively. Garda O'Dwyer said that McDonagh was 'extremely aggressive from the start' and shouted a number of threats at him, including that he knew where he lived and that he would shoot him. He said that McDonagh sprayed him twice with a bottle of Lucozade and continued to be aggressive with him. Garda O'Dwyer said that McDonagh was arrested, handcuffed and conveyed to a garda station, where his aggressive behaviour continued and he spat blood in a garda car, resulting in a cleaning fee of 52 euro. Defence counsel for McDonagh, Paul Larkin Coyle BL, said his client now accepts that his behaviour was totally unacceptable and was appealing the case on the severity of his sentence only. Mr Coyle said McDonagh was 'begging for a chance' so that he can be present for his children and that his client made an apology to the garda and the court for his behaviour. Mr Larkin said that McDonagh's pregnant wife was in hospital at the time of the incident, and McDonagh 'got lost in the emotion of it' and 'totally lost the head'. He said that his client is now the father of twins, understands the error of his ways and has removed himself from a situation where he was getting in trouble. The court heard that McDonagh has 22 previous convictions, including incidents of theft, criminal damage and the possession of a knife. Judge Christopher Callan said that McDonagh's actions were serious and it was 'difficult to see how the court can have much sympathy for him' after he threatened to shoot a garda and behaved aggressively. Judge Callan said that the job of a garda in this day and age is very difficult and what McDonagh did 'does not make it easy'. He said that what McDonagh did to the garda was 'completely unacceptable' but it does appear that he is turning a corner in his life since the incident. Judge Callan decided to suspend McDonagh's six month sentence for a period of two years on the condition that he keeps the peace, engages with the probation services and provides a donation of 500 euro to the Capuchin Day Centre. Funded by the Courts Reporting Scheme
The Journal
18-06-2025
- Business
- The Journal
Where was the winning EuroMillions ticket sold? That's a closely guarded secret (for now)
THE LOCATION OF the retailer where the winning EuroMillions ticket was sold is being kept a closely guarded secret for now, the National Lottery has said. The recording breaking jackpot of €250 million — far surpassing the previous record of €175 million in 2019 — was won last night by an Irish ticket holder. The winning numbers are 13, 22, 23, 44, 49, with Lucky Stars 3 and 5, and the ticket was sold in a retail shop and not online. 'We've a lot of processes in place in the National Lottery and we're really going through our due diligence at the moment,' Lotto spokesperson Darragh O'Dwyer told The Journal . 'There's only a select few that do know the exact location [where the ticket was sold], and we will be releasing that to the public over the coming days.' Although that might narrow it down, the true identity of the winner or winners may never be known: Advertisement 'There's no obligation for any winner to go public. 'In the National Lottery, we take that absolutely seriously, that whatever a winner decides to do, whether they decide to go public or remain private, we'll absolutely respect that decision.' The Journal / YouTube O'Dwyer added that the claims team were 'well-versed' in handling big wins like this, but that due to the fine print of its government licence, the Lottery can't provide further advice to the winner in areas such as financial planning, legal counsel, or mental health support. As their first action, the holder of the winning ticket is advised to sign their ticket, then contact the National Lottery's claims team by phone or email to confirm their big win. Premier Lotteries Ireland (PLI), the operator of Ireland's National Lottery, is owned by French gambling company Française des Jeux (FDJ). It was purchased from its three main shareholders — Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan from Canada, An Post and An Post Pension Fund — in 2023 . PLI made a loss of more than €7 million in 2023 due to restructuring costs. From sales worth close to €830 million , €478.8 million was distributed in prizes, and just shy of €230 million to good causes . Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
Politico
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Politico
How New York City's Shattered Political Culture Made Cuomo's Comeback Possible
In The Power Broker, the ultimate account of New York politics in the 20th century, historian Robert Caro revealed how an anonymous court secretary named Vincent Impellitteri became mayor of America's largest city. It started in 1945 when New York's then-dominant Democratic leaders gathered to build their ticket for the three top jobs in local government. After deciding on Brooklyn District Attorney William O'Dwyer for mayor and Bronx state senator Lazarus Joseph for city comptroller, they faced a dilemma in picking a candidate for the since-abolished office of city council president. 'Since O'Dwyer was Irish and from Brooklyn, while Joseph was Jewish and from the Bronx, the slate could have ethnic and geographic balance only if its third member was an Italian from Manhattan,' Caro wrote. Then, one of the party bosses noted that legal secretary jobs in the state courts went only to machine loyalists, meaning any of them could be counted on to do what party leaders wanted. 'He turned to the list of legal secretaries and ran his finger down it looking for a name that even the dumbest voter would be able to tell was Italian — and came to Vincent R. Impellitteri.' Five years later, when O'Dwyer faced an investigation into his ties to organized crime, President Harry Truman — in the closest thing to a precedent for the Donald Trump administration's abandonment of the bribery case against Mayor Eric Adams — appointed the embattled Democrat ambassador to Mexico, letting him flee the reach of justice. The city's succession rules left the still-unknown Impellitteri interim mayor of New York. But the rules also compelled a near-immediate special election to complete O'Dwyer's term, and the Democratic leaders judged Impellitteri unfit for the job and denied him their nomination. Improbably, Impellitteri launched his own 'Experience Party' ballot line and won, riding a mass backlash from a public infuriated over local corruption in general and the O'Dwyer scandal in particular. This episode encapsulates political life in New York City for most of the last century: machines strong enough to raise a nobody to the highest echelons of political power, but that kept the public engaged enough in municipal affairs that it could at times buck their influence. Through World Wars, a Great Depression, race riots, white flight, civil rights fights, crime waves, strikes and a brush with municipal bankruptcy, this tension — between Democratic Party organizations that fostered corruption but also uplifted average citizens, and average citizens motivated to punish the party's worst failures and excesses — remained remarkably consistent, from Robert Anderson Van Wyck through Rudolph Giuliani. But that was then. The strange political resurrection of ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo 75 years later illustrates how badly the city's institutions, both the political machines and the civic consciousness that were both a product of them and checked them, have broken down. The city's Democratic powerbrokers have all but stampeded over each other to endorse Cuomo — despite their having demanded his resignation three years ago after an attorney general's report found he had sexually harassed subordinates — and despite their own long-running personal feuds with the ex-governor and close relationships with rival candidates. Nearly all polls have shown Cuomo in the lead, though the most recent surveys suggest a tightening race with Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the candidate of the Democratic Socialists of America. If Cuomo, the born politician with his universal name recognition, triumphs in the Democratic primary this month, it will complete a revolution that started 12 years ago, when ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner used his viral fame to vault ahead of municipal pols in the 2013 mayoral race before he imploded. Hyper-local political networks — whether embodied in the machines or in their opposition — have lost the ability and even the will to mobilize voters en masse and to independently elevate mayoral candidates. This has coincided with a collapse in participation in local elections, and the rise of what Dr. Heather James, a social sciences professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College, termed 'superstar politics' — in which national name recognition counts for everything. 'The information structure has nationalized,' she asserted. 'Cuomo is sort of his own superstar name in New York. He definitely benefits from that consolidation of information. It's harder for other candidates to get their name out there and compete.' The gears of yesteryear's machines were political clubs organized at the neighborhood level. These clubs, according to the sociologist James Q. Wilson, offered a combination of 'tangible incentives' — most notoriously, patronage jobs, though some Tammany Hall leaders simply provided free meals to impoverished constituents at club meetings — and 'intangible' ones, such as 'the expression of neighborhood, ethnic or tribal solidarity and for social action among old acquaintances.' Wilson and the historian Caro both noted this system was grossly corrupt, but also resulted in hyper-responsive city services and a tight bond between communities and local government. In his 1962 study The Amateur Democrat, Wilson highlighted how Impellitteri's successor, Robert Wagner, along with countless candidates for state and city office, drew upon a new, rival infrastructure of similarly hyper-local reform Democratic clubs that developed as young professionals flooded Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. Wilson noted these organizations offered only intangible incentives appealing to an educated and transient political base: high-minded political discussions, a crusading public spirit and regular social mixers that allowed new arrivals to make friends and meet romantic partners. Wilson noted that the incentives and demographics might have been different, but both aimed at controlling local offices through aggressive outreach and engagement at the neighborhood level. As a result, voter engagement was extremely high: Roughly 2.2 million New Yorkers cast ballots in the 1953 mayoral election, a now-unimaginable 93 percent of registered voters. As Manhattan grew wealthier, reform clubs came to dominate the borough, and the official Democratic machine shriveled to a rump organization based in Harlem, though in the working-class outer boroughs the bosses remained strong. The machines remained dominant, until mismanagement or corruption provoked enough outrage to elect a Republican or a Democrat who had broken with the party leadership. This era shaped Trump, known to admire the late, baseball bat-wielding Brooklyn boss Meade Esposito. However, the real club Esposito swung was his organization, which could corral power across the three branches of government, something recent presidents and mayors have struggled with. But multiple developments in the late 20th century and early 21st century shattered the political culture of New York — and made Cuomo-level name recognition the strongest force in politics. Democrats' power broke down somewhat in the two decades the party spent outside Gracie Mansion. After the trauma of 9/11, Giuliani became the first Republican mayor in city history to successfully hand over his office to his preferred successor: billionaire Michael Bloomberg, whose willingness to spend virtually unlimited funds to win re-election reduced the Democratic nomination to a booby prize for two cycles. This disrupted the cycle that was established over the past several decades of machine scandal followed by reform backlash. But these two administrations did not entirely break the old machines. Bloomberg still needed the old political chieftains for the votes they controlled in the city council and state legislature. They also could save him money by preventing a talented challenger from emerging, and so he often propped them up with city contracts and even donations from his own vast fortune. Still, Giuliani and Bloomberg's administrations weakened the power centers of New York politics and the lively political culture that the old order had created. Professor John Mollenkopf, of the City University of New York's Center for Urban Research, proposed another cause for the breakdown of the old political order: the city's pioneering matching funds system, through which the Campaign Finance Board awards taxpayer cash to multiply the amount of every small donation a candidate receives. The city inaugurated the program after Giuliani-led investigations imploded the administration of Mayor Ed Koch, who was entangled in a vast corruption scheme involving outer borough Democratic bosses in the 1980s. Matching funds aimed to break the cycle of scandal and backlash, and shift influence from big players to small donors. What it did, Mollenkopf suggested, was break an entire model of politics as collective civic endeavor, and warp the economics of elections by pumping gargantuan sums of public cash — from $4.5 million in 1989 to $126.9 million in 2021 — into the process. Mollenkopf stressed that he believes matching funds have had a net positive effect. But by funneling money to individual campaigns and away from organizations, whether reform- or machine-oriented, it recentered the city's political life around specific politicians instead of the social networks behind them. Electing people to office became less the ongoing mission of groups that consistently raised money and turned out voters, and more one-off ventures by individual candidates who could access public dollars. So the clubs withered. By 1996, the New York Times reported the number of Democratic clubs citywide had declined from a pre-World War II high of more than 1,000 to just 150. Official figures are hard to come by today, but based on public listings and discussions with party insiders, there appear to be only around 75 currently, and only a handful wield any influence. The collapse of club infrastructure coincided with plummeting participation in local elections. The percentage of registered voters in New York who cast ballots declined from 93 percent in 1953 to 57 percent in 1993, and to just 24 percent in 2013. Only 1,149,172 New Yorkers voted in the 2021 election out of 5,586,318 on the rolls, barely above one in five. That means despite more than twice as many people being registered as in 1953, only a little more than half as many cast a ballot. Further, the huge infusions of taxpayer dollars super-charged the political consulting industry, which grew ever-more technical and sophisticated in their methods of pinpointing, persuading and motivating the people most likely to vote — or at least in advertising their supposed ability to do so. The old-fashioned volunteer-driven door-knocking, phone-banking and local rallies the political clubs specialized in seemed decreasingly relevant. Mass participation gave way to micro-targeting, and the system of incentives around club life collapsed. In consequence, New York politics lost their unique character, and began to mirror the national scene. 'The rise of the campaign consultant class has kind of replaced the political organization,' Mollenkopf argued. 'There's an increasing amount of money in politics, and it's become increasingly technocratic.' Mollenkopf argued the machines actually grew comfortable with waning popular engagement, which had chastened them at times in the past. Rather than work to broadly mobilize voters, he said, today they deliberately depress participation: working to kick rivals off the ballot in legislative races and to keep the total number of voters down, so that the few New Yorkers still under their sway wield outsized power. 'They're very comfortable with low turnout. There are people who care, whose paycheck depends on political access and political support, and they'll turn out to vote,' Mollenkopf said. And while machines once could arrange multiethnic alliances, the last fragments of civic infrastructure capable of activating low-income, low-education voters are ethno-religious: namely, the numerous Black churches and assorted ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects. These too have largely aligned with Cuomo, but like all other local institutions, they've suffered recent erosion. Many African-American congregations have lost members to Southern migration, while religious Jewish voters have drifted toward the Republican Party. The atrophied state of local Democratic Party organizations made them exceptionally vulnerable to a superstar like Cuomo, whose name alone exerts incredible gravitational pull. The reason so many party leaders fell in line behind Cuomo is that none of them could have stopped him, argued Tyrone Stevens, a former Cuomo aide. 'The issue for these political leaders and these unions is no one person has the political organization by themselves in place where they can just hop on to it and ride to victory,' asserted Stevens. 'It would be a risk for all these political leaders to say, 'We're going to try to stop Cuomo,' if he ultimately wins.' Cuomo, Stevens noted, would be in a position to award — or deny — jobs at City Hall to the favored aides of his supporters, and to grant or refuse requested favors. These are the meager spoils today's depleted machines contend for. Compounding all these dilemmas is the emergence of social media, which has altered the information environment most New Yorkers exist in. 'Ten years ago, you could ride the New York City subway and see people reading the newspaper,' Mollenkopf observed. 'Now, everybody is looking at their phone.' The phones have enabled the rise of a new kind of superstar, seen this year in Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani. Following the model fellow democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez created when she ousted Queens Democratic Party boss Joe Crowley in 2018, Mamdani has used his good looks, natural charisma and striking slogans to become a sensation in the fleeting visual world of social media. The two are, in short, influencers: the superstars of the ever-more fragmented future. Like Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani has energized the city's hyper-online under-40 vote and earned considerable traditional media attention. But such an approach has limited utility outside their overlapping Queens turf and a few inner-ring precincts of Brooklyn. And even the weakened party organizations behind Cuomo remain stronger citywide than the one supporting the assemblyman: the New York City chapter of the DSA. The NYC DSA is the best example of a newer political organization that resembles the reform clubs of old. But it has exhibited structural problems that inhibit its ability to function as a civic force. Successful democratic socialist parties internationally have mostly been direct outgrowths of labor organizations. But the NYC DSA, which only became an electoral force after 2016, has no comparable base for mass mobilization, and so its membership hovers around 10,000 — as Stevens and Mollenkopf noted, overwhelmingly white and ultra-educated. Its engagement shrank during the Biden years and reinflated with Trump's return and Mamdani's rise, indicating its strength is a product of superstar politics, not an antidote. Further, it has positioned itself as openly antagonistic toward the sort of older Democratic voters, often Black or Jewish, whom Mamdani desperately needs to peel away from Cuomo. 'People interpret some of the DSA's message as a rejection of the work that's been done by those who've been in the party, who've gone to community meetings, who have been poll workers, who have been volunteers, who have been doing this for years,' said Stevens. 'You can win state senate seats, you can win congressional seats, you can win assembly seats, you can win city council seats. But I don't think DSA has the ability to propel a citywide candidate yet to victory.' But Mamdani's online dominance has starved his rivals of the all-important spotlight, letting him successfully position himself as the only alternative to Cuomo. So on Tuesday, New York will witness two superstars colliding — a cataclysm that may finally annihilate the old civic system and create a model that elections, in New York and nationwide, could follow for decades to come.
Irish Daily Mirror
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Daily Mirror
Undocumented Irish in US could be deported to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba
The undocumented Irish in the US could be deported to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as Donald Trump's war on illegal immigrants intensifies, it's emerged. The cruel plans, which were first reported by the Washington Post, declared thousands of foreign nationals could be sent to the US military base in Cuba as early as this week. These include those from what are considered 'friendly European nations,' such as Britain, Italy, France, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Poland, and Turkey. The infamous facility came to international prominence after it began housing suspected terrorists along with others rounded up in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks - only a small handful remain. The harsh conditions inside the facility have been slammed by agencies such as Amnesty International. It has been described as a 'symbol of torture' where inmates face indefinite detention without charge or trial - specifically set up to get around US law. Former top New York Immigration lawyer Brian O'Dwyer, who also founded the Emerald Isle Immigration Center, believes the plan could actually happen. Speaking to the Irish Mirror, he said: 'Given this administration, absolutely. 'Most of the people who were originally put in Guantanamo Bay have either been sent back to their own country or some of them have actually died. There are not many of them left. 'It's a very small number. So there's this big facility; they could absolutely put a couple of hundred people in.' He continued: ''(Before the election) the Irish who were supporting Trump were saying 'he's going to deport the Latinos', we now know that there's no special category for Irish in the Trump administration. 'They're being treated like everybody else and that's very badly.' Mr O'Dwyer also said the current policy seems to move those detained to facilities located hours away from where they live. He explained: 'We've known that they've taken people who are ready to be deported and kept them in a number of different places in the United States. 'That's their kind of modus operandi. They take them away from their own home state and their own home support services. 'Somebody from New York City would be taken five hours away to a different detention facility.' The lawyer, who has since retired, said in all his years working on immigration cases, he has never seen anything like what's currently unfolding in the US. He continued: 'There have been times when people have cracked down on immigration; I understand that. 'But no one has ever come up with the deliberate cruelty that this administration has on human beings who are here in the United States without papers. 'This is a deliberate act of cruelty to discourage people.' Mr O'Dwyer said the Trump administration has been heaping pressure on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency known as ICE to ramp up detainees. He said this has led to law-abiding citizens who were undocumented being picked up instead of dangerous criminals. Mr O'Dwyer added: 'They are taking people who are basically complying with the law and filing their taxes and going to the immigration courts; they're the low-hanging fruit, and they're easy to pick off. 'Who they're really going after is law-abiding people who are doing their work, and that's the Irish.' He said undocumented members of the Irish community in New York are 'terrified.' He added: 'You're asking me all these questions and I wish I could give you the slightest glimmer of hope of anything and I can't. 'I've 50 years of experience in this, and I've never seen anything remotely close to this. 'I'd just ask everybody in the community that doesn't have regular status to keep their heads down, and hopefully, we get through it …we're going to do everything we can to help them.' According to the Washington Post, the plan, which could change, was devised as anti-immigration hard-liners inside Trump's inner circle pushed for more deportations and arrests of undocumented migrants. It is understood that preparations include screening for 9,000 people to decide whether they are healthy enough to be sent to the facility. The Washington Post reports that officials within the Trump administration believe the plan is necessary to free up capacity at domestic detention facilities. These have become overcrowded since he took office earlier this year.
RTÉ News
03-06-2025
- General
- RTÉ News
Ballintubber Abbey to build heritage and cultural centre
The 800-year-old Ballintubber Abbey in Co Mayo is aiming to become a centre of pilgrimage, with the addition of a heritage and cultural centre. Construction is due to begin next year on the new section which will compliment the existing church building and incorporate preserved ruins at the site. Speaking to RTÉ news Abbey Manager Suellen McKenna said the heritage centre will be a three-story extension. "The ground floor will be depicting the 800 years of the abbey. The second story will be dedicated to the Tóchar Phádraig and pilgrimage walks, and the third story will be a journey through mankind." Money for the renovation was sanctioned last year. Ballintubber Abbey Trust received €5.8 million from the Government's Rural Regeneration and Development Fund. Ballintubber Abbey is the starting point for pilgrims who walk the Tóchar Phádraig, or Patrick's Causeway. This is a 35km pilgrim route from Ballintubber to the top of Croagh Patrick. St Patrick is said to have fasted and prayed along the route as he spread the Christian message in Ireland in the fifth century. In the 1980s, the path was revitalised as a pilgrimage walk with the help of Ballintubber's Fr Frank Fahey. Fr Fahey still meets pilgrims and advises them to light a candle before they depart. He urges pilgrims to talk to fellow walkers about their lives and to offer up their sore feet as an act of penance. "Pilgrimage is always associated with penance. So, the penance is that during the day when walking the 22 miles, there is to be no complaining," he said. "For the things that you could complain about, you say thanks be to God." Ballintubber Abbey organises several walks a year on the Tóchar Phádraig. "You can see Croagh Patrick in the background. You come across every kind of terrain, and nature, and animal along the route." said Ms McKenna. Pilgrim path expert and guidebook author John G O'Dwyer said the Tóchar Phádraig goes back even further than St Patrick. "This would have been a pagan trail, and Croagh Patrick was a pagan mountain." He said the route to the mountain was once travelled by royalty in horse-drawn chariots, and some of the ancient stones from that road are visible in the ground. "It's older than the Spanish Camino," he said, adding that the trail is at least 2,000 years old. "The Camino is only a little bit over 1,000 years." Pilgrim paths are growing in popularity, according to Mr O'Dwyer. His latest guidebook details journeys that can be made on foot in a day or in stages over several days. "For example, you have St Finbarr's pilgrim path in Cork, Cnoc na DTobar, Cosán na Naomh on the Dingle Peninsula." Mr O'Dwyer also notes a rise in foreign visitors coming to Ireland specifically to walk a pilgrim path. Some, he said, walk for the challenge and scenery, others walk as an act of faith. So, what level of walking is involved for Patrick's Causeway? "It's not the same as training for a marathon," said Mr O'Dwyer. "But you do need to be reasonably fit. If you want to smell the flowers and hear the sheep, I'd suggest you walk to the abbey at Aughagower, then on the second day you do Croagh Patrick." Mr O'Dwyer said the benefits of walking in the footsteps of our ancestors and the saints are many.
