Prison, reoffending, addiction: Kerry man's 'vicious circle' racks up 548 convictions

A look through his chequered past takes one through a series of offences which began in the early 1990s and have continued through to recent months.

A central plank in his defence in several of his 548 convictions to date is his alcohol addiction and unresolved grief at the loss of relatives in a road tragedy near Castleisland on Easter Sunday in April 1995.

One garda who has dealt with O’Brien, who he refers to as Richie, over several years both in Kerry and Cork, recalls him as a “big stocky, blocky fella” who typically does not hurt people in his crimes.

I would say the majority of the offences are drunkenness and theft. There is never any violence there.

“To be fair to him when he is sober, he is actually a very approachable guy. He is just a drunken pest who robs. Nobody ever gets harmed. I only saw one person as bad as him before. Richie O’Brien is a pity and he probably now has the most convictions I have ever seen.” 

He says he has on occasion sat down for coffee with the Killarney man, and recalls him chatting a lot about his life.

Another garda who has dealt with him in Galway says his case shows the justice system is not working for him and has failed to help him turn his life around. He describes his life as a “vicious circle” between being in prison, reoffending and addiction to alcohol.

Having been well known to gardaí throughout Cork and Kerry, he is now known too in Galway. The garda says: “He spends a lot of time here in Galway now.” 

'Record' number of convictions

In recent months, Richard O’Brien’s appearance before Judge Mary Dorgan in Cork District Court led to the judge telling his defence solicitor Shane Collins-Daly that the number of his previous convictions “has to be a record”.

O’Brien, with an address at 14 Ardshanavooley, in Killarney town, pleaded guilty on that occasion to being drunk and a danger and engaging in threatening behaviour during a recent incident in Cork City. The two charges brought to 546 the number of convictions he has amassed in his 53 years.

Since that day in July, he has built up a further two.

In his defence, Mr Collins-Daly said: “He says his life was ruined by drink going back a long time. He lost six members of his family 27 years ago in a road traffic accident.” 

That tragedy occurred at Castlefelim near Castleisland is remembered with a marker at the spot, a reminder to those passing the location about the horrors visited on the Coffey, Harrington and O’Brien families in April 1995.

At the time, the accident was deemed to be the worst in the county in living memory, with six young people dead and several children orphaned.

Following the tragedy, during a visit to Ballyspillane community centre in Killarney, then president Mary Robinson told relatives of the six who were killed to keep talking about them all and to never forget them.

For Richard O’Brien, the deaths have been mentioned on a number of occasions as the reason why his life has been a pattern of amassing convictions — more than 340 of which were for being so intoxicated he was a danger to himself or others, while 56 were for engaging in threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to lead to a breach of the peace.

Now 53, O’Brien has been in and out of court for decades, with his records stretching back even before the horror crash of 1995.

When he was just 20, a case involving him and his brother Michael came before Listowel District Court in May 1994, during which he was jailed for his role in a melee in Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick.

A newspaper report at the time said he received a 27-month detention in a case arising from an incident at a premises called the Rendez Vous after they had been asked to leave. 

The court was told Richard O’Brien was taken to the Garda patrol car with “great difficulty” and that he headbutted a sergeant and kicked two other gardaí in their legs, with Superintendent Michael McCarthy saying both men were very drunk and abusive. After being taken to Newcastle West Garda Station, Richard O’Brien damaged a door of the patrol car.

The court heard he had convictions for assault, being drunk and disorderly, malicious damage and criminal damage relating to incidents dating back to 1991 — four years before the crash that killed his relatives. His solicitor for that case admitted that he had “an abysmal record”.

He was sentenced to three months detention for using threatening, abusive and insulting words, six months for failing to leave the Rendez Vous premises, six months detention for assaulting a garda sergeant, two six-month detentions for the assaults of two gardaí, and a three-month sentence for causing damage to the patrol car, with the sentences to run consecutively.

Two years earlier, he was convicted of breaking a window of a hotel in Ballybunion during a beach party fundraiser for the local water safety group on April 11, 1993. The court was told the event was spoiled by a disturbance outside the hotel when, according to witness Frank Quilter, a group of between 30 and 50 people tried to gain entry to the beach party but were refused.

Mr Quilter said he saw Richard O’Brien “prowling around the yard” and saw him break a window with a heavy object. A subsequent attempt to appeal the conviction for malicious damage was struck out. The appeal had been adjourned to allow him pay compensation but it was not paid.

Severe drink problem

Defence solicitors for O’Brien have put forward his relationship with alcohol in mitigating factors down through the years, including during the July court appearance.

Judge Mary Dorgan told him it would be “helpful” if he could get help for his drinking while in custody, as she said “it does not help matters”.

However, in a court case in 2011, his then solicitor Padraig O’Connell was reported in a newspaper coverage of the hearing as saying O’Brien was not in attendance because “he is presently being dried out”. During the same hearing, Mr O’Connell accepted his client was “well-known to the court”.

Four years earlier, he was in court accused of walking into a private house in Macroom while drunk and demanding a drink from the occupants. The court hearing in June 2007 was told he had 51 previous convictions at that point, with 10 of those for drunkenness. During that hearing, it was said he had a severe drink problem and had completed an addiction treatment course earlier that year.

However, since that hearing, he has amassed close to 500 further convictions.

Although O’Brien opted not to be interviewed for this piece, his Killarney-based solicitor, Padraig O’Connell, who has represented him for decades, agreed to contribute.

He says while many of his client’s offences have occurred in Kerry, he also has convictions from Donegal to Kerry. He also accepted O’Brien has convictions from the UK and the Netherlands. He points to alcohol as the key driver in why the Kerryman has accumulated so many offences over the past three decades.

It is total alcohol dependency. He is a man who is very well-got with judges, he is exceptionally courteous in court, he is exceptionally pleasant and it is only with alcohol that he causes difficulties.

“And that is shown by the vast majority of his convictions being Section 4 Public Order Offences, which are basically being intoxicated in a public place to such an extent that you are a danger to yourself or a member of the public.” 

Mr O’Connell says prison is not the place for a person like Richard O’Brien. 

“What it does do for him is that it allows him to dry out. And he has a fantastic family, a very loving family, a very caring family, a very decent family. They are exceptionally supportive of him.” 

While he has undertaken different courses of treatment over the years, his bid to break his alcohol dependence has not been successful.

“If I met him on the street today and he had not had alcohol, he couldn’t be nicer. When he would have drink taken, it isn’t that he would be nasty but he just would have a lack of control.” 

'An exceptionally pleasant man'

He describes him as a “loyal client” who is “an exceptionally pleasant man”.

“I could say nothing against him expect that he doesn’t seem to be able to beat the absolute dependency on alcohol.

He is a very decent, respectable, reverential man with a very loving family who care for him very deeply who has just not been able to cope with the addiction of alcoholism.

In the late 1980s, a young and hopeful Richard O’Brien was among a group of 58 people who completed a 13-week Cert training course at the Torc Hotel in Killarney for people who were unemployed. The course included basic tuition in cookery, food and bar service, reception work and hotel housekeeping.

During a special event to mark the completion of the course, drawings by Richard O’Brien were on display, and a newspaper report of the event referenced his “fine artistic flair”. 

It also said the Ardshanavooley man wanted to become a waiter. However, instead, he has spent more than half of his life caught in the revolving door between prison and freedom.

Padraig O’Connell says he also often helped on market stalls over the years.

“He does endeavour to work but unfortunately alcoholism has beaten his yen for work. Clearly, prison is not the place for him but what it does do, which is unintended, is that it allows him a period of reflection and to become dry.”