A 44-YEAR-OLD man who denies harassing a schoolteacher who used to be his girlfriend yesterday told how he felt that the woman had invaded his privacy when she got out of her car and took a photograph of him as he was stopped in traffic behind her.
Seamus Quirke of Glencullen, Duntahane Road, Fermoy, Co Cork, and originally from Ballyduff, Co Waterford, denied he was following Grainne Barry (35) on a date in June 2007 when he was stopped in traffic behind her at the Dunkettle Interchange just outside Cork city.
Mr Quirke told the jury at Cork Circuit Criminal Court yesterday that Ms Barry had got out of her car and took a picture of him with a disposable camera.
“I’m not sure how I felt about it. To a certain extent, it was a bit like an invasion of privacy. I knew what was happening but there wasn’t much I could do about it,” Mr Quirke told his barrister, Shay Roche, in direct evidence.
Mr Quirke denies a total of four counts of harassing Ms Barry on various dates between 2005 and 2008 at various locations in Cork, Limerick and Tipperary and a fifth count of causing criminal damage to the registration plate of her car.
Mr Quirke agreed he had followed Ms Barry on one occasion coming into Glanmire village as he had been followed by a car upon leaving his workplace and when the car ended up ahead of him on the Fermoy-Cork road, he wanted to check if it was Ms Barry.
He also agreed he had turned around and drove back after seeing Ms Barry as she walked along Courtbrack Avenue in Limerick on July 31st, 2005, as he wanted to verify whether she was living in a particular housing estate.
But he denied a series of allegations that he followed her from Fermoy to Mitchelstown on another occasion or that he stared at her coming out a shop in Fermoy or that he glared at her coming out of a shop in Roscrea, Co Tipperary.
Mr Quirke said he and Ms Barry had enjoyed “a healthy relationship” for a number of years and that when they split up in October 1996, it ended amicably.