A campaign for a public inquiry that began soon after Monaghan man Shane O'Farrell was killed in a 2011 hit-and-run, ended today as the Minister of Justice issued a Government apology to the O’Farrell family and promised reforms.
A 23-year-old law graduate, Shane was knocked down and killed by a car driven by Zigimantas Gridziuska in August 2011. The then 38-year-old Lithuanian was a repeat criminal who had committed a series of offences while on bail and, a year before the hit-and-run, was given a prison sentence which he did not serve.
Today, Minister Jim O’Callaghan detailed a lengthy list of examples where Gridziuska, despite breaching bail conditions and continuing to commit crime, remained at liberty.
As well as apologising, Mr O’Callaghan also announced a review of bail laws, a forthcoming change to road traffic law and a new scholarship in Shane O’Farrell’s name at UCD, where Shane had studied.
The O'Farrell family had long lobbied for a public inquiry into how the justice system dealt with the repeat criminal who was driving the car that killed Shane.
The Dáil voted twice for such a public inquiry, in 2018 and 2024.
Minister O’Callaghan said there was no need for a public inquiry.
"I do not need to wait for five years for an inquiry report to tell me about those failings. I know them already. I do not need a report to force me into Dáil Éireann to give the apology to the O’Farrell family that I humbly give today."
The family welcomed the apology, but criticised the State for its previous treatment of them.
In a statement, they said: "We hope that the apology today is a watershed for the Department of Justice and State bodies engaged in the administration of justice. We hope that senior civil servants reflect on the malpractice identified both before and after Shane’s death.
"Those involved in the culture of concealment which we have experienced should be asked by the Secretary General of the Department of the Taoiseach to account for their actions…We hope that our advocacy over the past 13 years has drawn attention to the failings in the system and it is now incumbent on the State to address these issues.".
Mr O’Callaghan said the Government would look at "the broader question [of] how our criminal justice system should respond to a recidivist offender who persistently breaks summary laws."
He has asked Senior Counsel Lorcan Staines "to assess our bail laws and make any recommendations he believes are appropriate, taking into account the requirements of constitutional justice and the impossibility of refusing bail to every person accused of summary offenses."
That report will be finalised and presented four months from Mr Staines' appointment, he said.
He also said the Government will seek to amend the road traffic legislation to allow a jury to consider a charge of careless driving where a judge has directed acquittal on a charge of dangerous driving.
Since 1962, Mr O’Callaghan said, the "option of the lesser offense is available with a jury acquittal of dangerous driving, and it's a serious flaw in our law that the option is not available in the event of an acquittal direction from the judge."
The change is relevant to the case of Shane O’Farrell because the trial judge ultimately directed the acquittal of Zigimantas Gridziuska on a charge of dangerous driving, meaning that he could not face the lesser charge of careless driving.
The details of Shane O'Farrell’s case are widely known because of the doggedness of the family in publicly highlighting the case.
After the hit-and-run, Shane’s body was found 54 metres from the point where he was hit and his bicycle was found 60 metres away. He died at the scene.
Gridziuska drove on and hid his damaged car in bushes near his home, several kilometres away. He then presented himself at Carrickmacross Garda Station the following day.
After his death, Shane’s mother, Lucia O’Farrell, searched newspaper archives seeking details of the man who had killed her only son.
She and her family wrote to State agencies and made Freedom of Information or data access requests to bodies such as the Department of Justice, the Courts Service, the Prison Service, the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, An Garda Síochána and the PSNI.
Today, the family criticised State agency attitudes they encountered during their campaign.
"The treatment of our family by various State bodies, once we started asking questions and advocating for Shane, was abusive and disrespectful. From the beginning, the State should have stood with us and provided us with answers but instead it stood against us...
"What followed was stonewalling by State agencies who adopted deflection, evasiveness and most importantly, a deliberate lack of completeness and transparency. We learned of Gridziuska's criminal past from our own efforts, not from the State", which the family accused of having a "cover-up culture."
Speaking in the Dáil, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald praised the family for their "courageous" and "relentless" campaign and said they had suffered a "litany of abuse by the entire State apparatus".
Wagons were "circled", she said, adding that information had to be "dragged out of the authorities."
The picture that the family built up was that Gridziuska was a recidivist criminal who was on a carousel of committing crime, getting arrested, getting bail, committing more crime, getting convicted, getting sentenced, getting released and committing more crime.
In 2010, Gridziuska received a six-month prison sentence. He lodged an appeal, but the appeal was never heard and he never served the sentence.
In a statement to Prime Time, the Courts Service said it "would like to apologise for misfiling the notice of appeal in relation to Mr Zigimantas Gridziuska in June 2010. We deeply regret the distress that our actions have caused the O’Farrell family."
It also said that it had introduced a stronger procedure "to minimise the chance of a repeat of the human error that gave rise to the misfiling of the appeal. This includes giving appeal hearing dates immediately and cross-checking papers to ensure that all appeals are correctly processed."
It also said that "our Modernisation Programme, 2020-2030, is addressing the need to modernise our legacy systems so that we can automate manual entry processes such as these, to improve efficiencies and reduce manual errors."
At the time of the August 2011 hit-and-run, Gridiuska was on bail from at least five different courthouses.
Defendants sign bail bonds, promising to not to commit crime, yet in the 19 months prior to the incident Gridziuska committed around 30 offences, mostly heroin possession, theft and handling stolen goods.
"We discovered he was in court in Virginia, Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, Dundalk, Carrickmacross District Court, Monaghan District Court, Monaghan Circuit Court, Ardee, Co Louth," Lucia O’Farrell told Prime Time in 2018.
"He seemed to be in every court walking in and out ... He seemed to get fines, get the benefit of the Probation Act, community service and then he'd get full temporary release, and reoffend. He could do what he liked, bail had no legal meaning for him," she added.
The family kept up their research, forensically building up a huge body of documents that collectively shone a rare light on the inner workings of a District Court system and how it deals with low-level criminals such as Gridziuska.
A complaint by the family led to two reports by GSOC. The first one took six years to complete. It found no criminal culpability by gardaí involved in dealing with Gridziuska, though it confirmed details of a key event that could have altered Shane O'Farrell’s fate.
In 2011, seven months before he killed Shane O'Farrell, Gridziuska appeared before Judge John O’Hagan at Monaghan Circuit Court on five charges, including some relating to the theft of over €3,500 of electrical equipment.
The GSOC report stated that the judge adjourned the sentence, but said: "if he was arrested for any offence under the theft and fraud legislation Mr Gridziuska was to be brought back before Judge O’Hagan ... and Mr Gridziuska would be sent to jail."
After this order, Gridziuska committed at least 11 more offences, Mr O'Callaghan said today.
Four months after Judge O'Hagan's order, for example, Gridziuska appeared before Ardee District Court where he was convicted on theft charges. These crimes were breaches of multiple bail bonds and were also a clear breach of Judge O'Hagan’s order.
GSOC noted in its first report that, "... no effort was made by the gardaí to re-enter Mr Gridziuska’s case at any stage before Judge O'Hagan" and the judge in Ardee District Court "...was not informed" of Judge O'Hagan's order four months earlier.
In July 2011, three weeks before the hit-and-run, another event occurred that may have changed the outcome for Shane O'Farrell. Gridziuska was arrested for stealing and was convicted in Newry in Northern Ireland, receiving a suspended sentence.
A subsequent GSOC investigation stated that gardaí were unaware of those Newry convictions. However, a letter from the PSNI to Lucia O'Farrell suggested that at least some in An Garda Síochána were aware.
It stated that a PSNI constable "…contacted colleagues in An Garda Síochána to establish Mr Gridziuska’s criminal background in connection with a remand hearing in court…"
For the O'Farrell family, it was another 'what if' moment. If the justice system worked the way it should have, Shane may still be alive.
Mr O’Callaghan, referring to convictions in 2011 before the hit-and-run, said earlier today: "The O'Farrell family believe, and I agree with them, that had those convictions on the 16th of February, the 23rd of February, the 8th of March, the 9th of May, the 11th of May, the 8th of June, the 15th of July, and of the 25th of July been brought to the attention of Judge O'Hagan as he directed in his ruling of the 11th of January, 2011, the likelihood is that Gridziuska would have had a custodial sentence imposed upon him on any of those dates.
"Had this occurred, Gridziuska may not have been at large on that fateful day on the 2nd of August, 2011 when Shane was killed," he added.
After the Dáil’s first vote for a public inquiry, the Department of Justice in 2019 appointed a retired judge, Gerard Haughton, to report on whether such an inquiry was necessary.
Judge Haughton's subsequent Scoping Exercise report recommended against a public inquiry. His report upset the family because it emphasised the view that Shane O'Farrell was partially responsible for his own death. The first paragraph of the 416-page report noted details of the incident. The second paragraph began: "There were neither front nor rear lights on Shane O'Farrell's bicycle which at the time was being ridden approximately [15 inches] out on the main carriageway of a major road with a speed limit of 100km/h."
Quoting the Forensic Collision Investigator, the report states "the cyclist was wearing dark clothes. He had a small red rear reflector, one yellow reflector on each pedal and a yellow armband."
Further down the first page the judge quotes a court judgment stating: "Failure to have such lighting is highly negligent behaviour on the part of a cyclist."
The O’Farrell family strongly disagreed with these references, saying that the focus should have remained on Gridziuska, who, aside from whether he should have been in custody, did not have valid car insurance or an NCT at the time of the accident.
Shane went out on a summer's evening and "he was legally entitled" to be on the road, "that man [Gridziuska] was not legally entitled to be on the road. And that's the core issue here," Lucia O’Farrell told Prime Time in 2023.
The O'Farrell family withdrew their cooperation before the report was finalised and said that they regretted having ever cooperated.
Also, while noting in his report that "conditions of bail were breached by [Mr Gridziuska] numerous times" the Judge Haughton said that "none of the breaches constituted an offence under section 13" of the Criminal Justice Act, which deals with breaches of bail conditions.
He described Gridziuska’s "offending behaviour" as that of a "recidivist minor shoplifter" that was not serious enough for him to be refused bail, noting that "none of his offences in Ireland North or South involved the use of violence or threats thereof."
Judge Haughton also noted that Gridziuska never failed to show up for a court appearance which, he said, is the main purpose of bail.
Speaking to Prime Time in 2023, Shane O'Farrell’s sister Hannah asked: "What is the function of bail in Ireland if it's not to bring back before the courts a person who has committed further offences on bail, who clearly has no respect for the law? What is the function of bail law in Ireland if that's not the case?"
The Haughton report, however, praised the O’Farrell family, stating: "Their collective input and participation was critical as without it this exercise would have been greatly diminished and limited if not pointless."
Judge Haughton also acknowledged the pain of the family at the references in it to Shane's responsibility in his demise.
Gridziuska never served any prison time relating to the death of Shane O’Farrell.
He received suspended prison sentences for failing to stop and remain at the scene of a crash.
He was later jailed for other offences and was subsequently deported in 2013 and ordered to stay out of Ireland for ten years.
