Navan, the county town of Meath, is Ireland's fifth-largest town with a population of 31,689. It's described by Tripadvisor as 'the gateway to the Heritage Capital of Ireland'.

The recently-elected Lord Mayor of the town, Tommy Reilly, must have expected that he would be enjoying his new role, representing and promoting the town as a public representative.

Instead, this afternoon, he was on Liveline, telling Joe Duffy about the shocking, unprovoked assault on his son last Sunday. Ciarán, Tommy's son, runs a supermarket in the town and Tommy left the shop on Sunday evening when Ciarán arrived in. He didn't get very far when he had to return.

"When I came back down they had him on the ground, kicking him."

A group of five young men had attacked Ciarán outside the shop. Tommy explained that one of the gang had come into the shop and asked Ciarán if he wanted to 'have it now'. Ciarán told him to go on about his business and that he didn't want any trouble. Then a second  man leaped into the shop, like a boxer in the ring, and hit Ciarán on the head. The first young man picked up a heavy glass vase from the display outside the shop and fired it in, narrowly missing a woman browsing the fruit and vegetable stand.

That was when Ciarán decided he had to go outside to avoid possible injury to customers. Which, of course, was exactly what the young men wanted. As soon as he got outside the door, the two men, together with three other men from across the road, grabbed him and started hitting and kicking him.

"Three or four more come from across the road and they joined in and they raining kicks on him and boxes on him."

Tommy arrived back and started pulling the men off his son. The men moved off slowly, going across the road, shouting abuse back at Ciarán and Tommy. The gardaí arrived shortly after that.

Ciarán spent the night in the Emergency Department and has to wait for swelling to go down to have more tests. The assault was captured on CCTV, but, Tommy says, none of the men involved in the assault was arrested by the gardaí.

You can hear all of Tommy's story and listen back to the rest of today's Liveline here