An Irish businessman who has engaged in a smear campaign against presidential candidate Jim Gavin was previously charged, alongside another man, with attacking a fisheries board officer in Co Waterford and later convicted.
The incident, in July 1993, resulted in the fisheries board officer, Michael Hickey of Carrick-on-Suir, spending 15 days in hospital and being confined to a wheelchair for a period. When the men were sentenced in November 1994, Mr Hickey was still undergoing treatment.
Kieran Kelly was given a three-year sentence, though it was suspended, while his co-accused was given a one-year suspended sentence. Kelly was residing in Ballyreilly, Ring, Co Waterford, at the time.
Later, former Progressive Democrats leader Dessie O’Malley raised the case of Mr Hickey, saying he was a whistleblower who had been very badly treated by his employer after being attacked.
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“Two individuals were convicted of this assault and sentenced to terms of imprisonment; they were believed to have been associated with the IRA,” Mr O’Malley told the Dáil in April 1999.
Mr Hickey was attacked as he tried to board the vessel Kelly was on, the Claudia, during a seagoing salmon protection patrol off Helvick Head, Co Waterford. The attack included the use of stones and flares, the court was told.
Judge Diarmuid Sheridan praised Mr Hickey for his “extraordinary compassion” in “putting in a word” for Kelly and the other attacker. He said Kelly and the other man would have been jailed but for the officer’s “interjection” on their behalf.
Kelly did not reply to a request for comment from The Irish Times. However, he has in some social media content said he was involved in “a clash” with fisheries officers. He also accused Mr O’Malley of saying he was “a leading member of the Provisional IRA” in Waterford, describing it as “complete nonsense”.
Kelly has since emigrated, living for a time in the United States, and now with an address in Indonesia. He was sued for almost €500,000 last year for spreading defamatory claims on social media.
Kelly set up a company to clear plastic from the seas and the claims he made were about a Danish company, Resea Project, which engages in similar work. Kelly falsely accused the company of dumping the plastic it collected back into the water and was successfully sued, in the US, by Resea.
During his evidence at Kelly’s 1994 trial, fisheries officer Mr Hickey made allegations against some of his own colleagues. He alleged corruption, claiming it had increased tensions between officers and fishermen in Waterford.
In the 1980s into the 1990s some fisherman made claims that demands for money were made of them by some fisheries officers. They claimed any fisherman who refused to comply was not given advance warning of fishery patrols. Though some fisheries officers were charged, relating to allegedly taking money from fishermen, they were acquitted.
Mr Kelly has in recent weeks, in posts on social media, made damaging claims about Mr Gavin’s personal life. Mr Gavin, the former Dublin footballer manager who is Fianna Fáil’s candidate in the presidential election, contacted the social media companies and some of the posts have been taken down. Mr Gavin’s campaign has said the claims are “invented and utterly false”.
“I refuse to accept that the price of participating in public life should involve having to put your family and friends through waves of online abuse and malicious smears,” Mr Gavin said, adding that the claims were part of “a failure of our digital culture”.
