Family of hit-and-run victim Shane O'Farrell want action on changing two specific bail laws

LUCIA O’FARRELL, THE mother of hit-and-run victim Shane O’Farrell, will focus on two proposed changes to the bail laws when she addresses the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration this afternoon.

23-year-old Shane died after being knocked off his bicycle near his home in Carrickmacross in August 2011 by a car driven by Zigimantas Gridziuska.

The Lithuanian national, who was on bail at the time, had 42 previous convictions including for road traffic offences and aggravated burglary. 

Two weeks before the collision, Gridziuska had been arrested in Newry for three counts of theft. The day he struck Shane with his car, Gradzuiska was on bail from courts in both Monaghan and Cavan and on a peace bond from Dundalk Circuit Court.

Seven months before the hit-and-run, Monaghan Circuit Court Judge John O’Hagan had deferred finalising a sentence for Gridziuska but ordered that the Lithuanian be brought back before him if he committed any more offences and had warned him that he would be jailed.

Within those seven months he was charged with and/or committed 11 further offences, yet was not returned to Judge O’Hagan.

In the case of Shane’s death, Gridziuska pleaded guilty to failing to stop at the scene and to report the incident but was acquitted of dangerous driving causing death and served no prison time.

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Shane’s family has been campaigning for a public inquiry to be established into the circumstances that resulted in Griziuska being in the community and not behind bars.

Speaking in the Dáil in May last year, Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan issued a Government apology to the O’Farrell family over Shane’s death and “for the fact that the criminal justice system did not protect him as it should have” and promised a review of bail laws.

This afternoon Lucia O’Farrell will highlight how Griziuska had committed 30 offences while on bail over a two-year period and say that “the real worry” is that these breaches were known and not acted upon.

As a result she will argue there needs to be a consequence and a deterrent “for those who show scant regard for court orders”.

The O’Farrell family is focusing on two of the 15 recommendations made by Lorcan Staines SC in his review of the bail laws of Ireland. The review was carried out following the family’s campaigning. 

They want future court proceedings to be prosecuted by legal professionals and not An Garda Síochána. Lucia O’Farrell will cite a 2018 report by The Commission On The future of Policing in Ireland which recommends that all prosecution decisions should be taken away from the police and given to expanded state solicitors or national prosecution service and that the practice of police prosecuting cases in court should cease.

They also want an amendment to The Bail Act 1997 to provide for the power to arrest without a warrant a person suspected of breaching a bail condition in order to bring them before the court to apply for the revocation of bail or the amendment of bail conditions.

Lucia O’Farrell will say that implementing the 15 recommendations will go a long way to ensure there is not another victim like her son, but will stress that unless the government takes the bail issue seriously “we will continue to see totally preventable crime and deaths like that of our beautiful Shane, devastating families and communities”.

Representatives from The Bar of Ireland, The Law Society of Ireland and the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) will also speak at the committee hearing this afternoon.