'The law must change. Who else's son or daughter will be next?' say Matt O'Neill's parents

His mother Eileen can no longer walk down the road by their house where her son was fatally assaulted. On a damp December evening, it’s hard to imagine such violence on the quiet, well-lit residential street, flanked by manicured gardens and polished cars.

Matt had walked there to buy a bottle of wine at the nearby garage the night he was attacked in the Glenwood estate by two local males who were teenagers at the time, Ricardo Hoey (aged 21) of Ardcarrig, Carrigaline and Jordan Deasy (aged 20) of nearby Ravensdale, Heron’s Wood.

They knocked Matt to the ground and kicked and punched him as he lay there defenceless. His parents were alerted by a neighbour and rushed to their son’s side. They are now haunted by what they saw that night as their only child lay "lifeless and bleeding on the street".

“That was a pretty horrific scene. He had blood everywhere," Pat O'Neill told the Irish Examiner. Mr O’Neill grabbed a sleeping bag and placed it over his son as first responders tried to save him before he was taken by ambulance to Cork University Hospital.

Matt died 11 days later in hospital having never regained consciousness.

Hoey had no previous convictions. Jordan Deasy had 11, including one for assault causing harm, which occurred just 12 months earlier, in December 2021. He received a two-year suspended sentence for this attack on a teenager in Carrigaline.

Both men were acquitted of murder but were found guilty of manslaughter. Ms Justice Siobhan Lankford jailed both for seven years in July, suspending the last three years of their sentence.

A four-year sentence for violently taking someone’s life does not represent justice, the O’Neills believe. And suspending large portions of a sentence for violent crime sends the wrong signals to society, they said.

Mr O’Neill said when his son’s life support was turned off in early January of last year, it was “29 minutes before he passed — a minute for every year of his life”. 

Now, there is no Christmas tree in their beautiful, immaculate home. Twinkling lights are no longer strung throughout to brighten December’s darkness. “We’re just ignoring Christmas. We’ve been invited to family, but we're not going to go anywhere,” Mr O’Neill said.

“You don't want to bring somebody else's day down," Mrs O'Neill said. “We probably haven't processed all of it yet. The trial took up so much of this year.” 

Matt O'Neill

Matt was 6’4, but despite his height he was gentle. He loved animals and always supported the underdog. “He knew his own mind and he was a great judge of character,” his mum said.

Matt grew up in Brisbane, Australia, before the family moved back to Ireland. Photos in their home capture an idyllic childhood spent surfing and kayaking, discovering Ireland’s most beautiful beaches together on sun-soaked days.

Matt worked in his dad’s fiberglass business, which has been commissioned for jobs in the homes of brandy tycoons, multimillionaires in Kazakhstan and by the late Cranberries’ frontwoman Dolores O'Riordan.

Matt was charming and good-natured, clients warmed to him on jobs in their homes and he was the only person working for the company who his father ever saw a client tipping.

He could take apart a car, find the one faulty component and fix it. A natural negotiator and a sharp observer of human behaviour, Matt could sell off his father’s unwanted equipment at impressive prices.

Matt was an only child and was very close to his parents, who shared his love of water sports, music and adventure. “It was always the three of us,” his mum said.

Matt saved six people’s lives during his short life. Trained in lifesaving, at the age of 13, he helped rescue three people who had gotten into trouble in the sea. He gave two of them his surfboard to stay afloat and brought a third man ashore.

As an organ donor, he saved another three lives when his liver and both kidneys went to three other men.

'So much violence'

And his parents want to make sure that his legacy helps protect others through changes to the sentencing of violent crime, which they said is currently too lenient.

“There is so much violence now," Mr O'Neill said. “You take Natasha O’Brien and [Cathal] Crotty comes up and bashes her senseless on the street.

“Then you've got the garda in Dublin [who was left in a critical condition after he was attacked while off duty in Temple Bar on December 14]. His family is left sitting in a room outside of the ICU in despair.” 

Ms O’Neill also mentioned the case of Vanessa O’Callaghan, 36, who died after she was attacked by up to to three people as she left a soup kitchen on Cork’s Patrick Street on December 1.

They also referenced the attack that killed Cian Gallagher, 26, who was fatally assaulted by Maurice Boland, 37, on November 2, 2022, in Tallow, Co Waterford. Boland was on bail at the time of this offence for assault causing harm and had 23 previous convictions.

Intent to kill or cause serious harm is what separates a murder from a manslaughter conviction. In their son’s killers' case, the jury decided that there was not proof of such intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

But the O’Neill’s believe that any attack in which someone is repeatedly assaulted when lying defenceless on the ground should automatically prove an intent to cause serious injury or death.

“The law belongs to the people,” Mr O’Neill said. “And something has to change. There's a certain type of assault where you could not view it in any way other than that you are trying to inflict serious harm.

“Even if two people are in a fight and one guy's gone down and the other guy keeps hitting him, you're intending to cause harm. So in the law, if you can prove that you carried out this beating then it should automatically be a murder charge [if the person dies].

“We have to get this classification of assault identified and established.” 

Ms O’Neill said: “In our case, with Matt, the defence was able to persuade the jury that it was a reckless act and not an intent to cause serious harm. So they put doubt about intent in the jury's mind.

“But Matt was highly intoxicated, he was on the ground, he couldn't even protect his head. If somebody's incapacitated, if you knock somebody down and you don't stop hitting them that's intent to cause serious harm.

“And if the person dies, then it should be a murder charge. So it's a life sentence. We somehow have to put this into law.” 

Mr O’Neill said: “Let's make it happen. Because even between now and the New Year we're probably going to have half a dozen near fatal assaults. We need to make a stand and say ‘we're not tolerating this anymore in our society’.

“We can take the message to the schools, we can teach students that if you attack someone, you might not intend to kill the person, but if you kept hitting him you could spend 20 years in jail.” 

Sentences

The couple also want to see a limit put on how much of a sentence imposed for a violent crime can be suspended.

“We could start off with a third, but that could be reduced to one fifth,” Mr O’Neill said. “So you could only suspend say a third of the sentence. Whereas in our case [about] two thirds of the sentence was suspended.” 

The O’Neills have spoken to Tánaiste Micheál Martin about their concerns and to other local TDs. They are seeking a meeting with the new justice minister in the new year.

Recent changes to sentencing include assault causing harm — the maximum sentence doubling from five years to 10 years.

A new standalone offence of stalking was also recently established with a maximum sentence of up to 10 years.

And a maximum sentence of up to life imprisonment can now be given in cases of non-fatal strangulation or suffocation causing serious harm.

The maximum sentence for attacks on gardaí or other on-duty emergency service workers was also increased in 2023 from seven to 12 years.

“So we can make changes to the law around sentencing,” Mr O’Neill said. “And we have to. Otherwise, who else’s son or daughter will be next?”