A woman has been found guilty of harassing a school principal and deputy principal during a protest campaign she launched after she felt her son had been mistreated over an allegation of bullying.
Thurles District Court heard that Eileen Phelan, 55, of Rathpatrick, Crosspatrick, via Thurles, Co Kilkenny, mounted a six-year protest outside Galmoy National School in Co Kilkenny.
She and her family were initially upset when the school insisted it had to keep a letter containing an allegation of bullying against her then ten-year-old son on file because of legal advice, despite her son being found innocent; and when the school said it would keep it on file with the names "blacked out".
Judge Elizabeth MacGrath found the facts proven in relation to the charges of harassing the school principal and deputy principal on dates unknown between 28 February and 3 May 2017, and dismissed three charges under the Public Order Act.
She referred the case to the Restorative Justice programme in a bid to resolve "the totality" of the matters at stake.
The defendant's son, about whom the initial letter was written containing an allegation of bullying, is now 20 and attending college, the court heard.
Deputy principal of Galmoy N.S., Bernadette Bergin, said that on 28 February of last year, Ms Phelan began "screaming hysterically at me" when she pulled up at the school in her car.
She was screaming "the truth, the truth" and other words and it happened again the following morning, Ms Bergin said.
Ms Bergin is a member of the board of management and Ms Phelan shouted "face up to your responsibilities" to her and "stop playing around with a young man's life".
The shouting continued in the mornings outside the school. "I couldn't sleep," Ms Bergin said. "I was quite anxious every morning dropping my own kids into school."
On one occasion, the accused had a copy of the book The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and was waving that at her, as well as the placard she always brought.
"I was terrified going into work," the witness said. "I felt terrorised by this and very, very frightened."
The school principal at the time, Brian Boyle, said Ms Phelan told him he was "a disgrace" and a "stain on the school" and this would happen as he went into school in the mornings and left in the evenings.
A car park was built to allow staff to drive into school grounds without having to get out of their cars in the public area and be met with Eileen Phelan, he said.
"The tone of the protest and the shouting was the most unsettling part of it."
Phelan told the court that, after a letter was sent to the school in 2010 by a third-party parent with an allegation of bullying, a meeting was held and it was established that her son had done nothing wrong.
"The problem was the letter, it was a very serious letter. There were very serious allegations on it."
They went to the board of management who said they would leave the letter on the school file, with the names blacked out, and would "shred it" in 2011 if everything was satisfactory.
"It didn't make sense," she said.
Her son was isolated in the school and they ended up withdrawing him at the age of 11, and his two younger siblings, and sending them to another school.
She made representations to the diocese, as the Bishop was the school's patron, and to the primate of All-Ireland Archbishop Martin, and to the Papal Nuncio, and was told at a meeting in 2015 in St John's Parish in Kilkenny that the school was retracting the letter.
They were "over the moon" but were told that October that the board had "gone back on their word".
She denied harassing the staff members. "I was protesting," she said.
Judge MacGrath ruled that the ingredients were present to find the harassment charges proven.
She adjourned the case until 26 February and kept bail conditions from earlier this year in place, including that Eileen Phelan stay away from Galmoy N.S. and the injured parties.
