A number of high-profile commentators have sought to suggest that anyone supporting the jailed Mayoman Pádraig Nally is motivated by anti-Traveller prejudice, a charge accompanied by much spurious argument and innuendo, but very little worthwhile evidence.
In her column here last Thursday, Mary Raftery rehearsed two cases involving what she said were similar circumstance, in which the convicted men had received eight-year sentences on conviction of manslaughter, two years more than Nally. Observing that there were no public protests about these cases, Ms Raftery decided that the only distinguishing element of the Nally case was that the victim was a Traveller. But there are several other distinguishing factors.
When he was convicted of the manslaughter of Jason Tolan, Thomas Murphy had 33 previous convictions, 10 of them for criminal offences. He was also a drug addict, having just completed a drug rehabilitation programme. He was acquainted with Tolan, whom he described in court as a "serious enemy". Tolan was alleged to be "loosely associated" with a criminal gang responsible for intimidation and violence in the Blanchardstown area. Murphy had been carrying a sawn-off shotgun around the streets for several days prior to the incident, as "protection", he claimed, for himself and his family.
On the day he killed Tolan, Murphy went to a place called the Shanty Field, carrying the loaded shotgun, where he encountered Tolan. He claimed that he shot Tolan in the leg because he feared he was going to "make a dive" at him. The wound subsequently proved fatal.
In the William Duffy case, the court heard that Duffy stabbed Paul Rooney 13 times after Rooney pushed Duffy's wife and demanded she give him heroin substitutes she had been prescribed. Duffy had multiple convictions and was a recovering heroin addict. Rooney was a guest in Duffy's house in Tallaght and was sitting in a chair when attacked by Duffy.
Some months, previously, Rooney had beaten Duffy with a chair and intimidated his family. Duffy had "forgiven" him, however, and permitted him to resume visiting the family home some weeks before he killed him.
Neither of these cases bears more than a superficial resemblance to the situation in which Pádraig Nally found himself.
Of the six men embraced by Mary Raftery's argument, Nally is the only one without a criminal record. One could summarise the Murphy and Duffy cases as exhibiting characteristics of drug-induced antagonisms between members of Dublin's narcotics-laced, quasi-criminal underbelly. Pádraig Nally was not a drug addict. He had, as the trial judge noted, an "unblemished record".
He was a quiet, harmless man, driven to distraction by thugs and blackguards. He was in his own home, minding his own business, when he found John Ward, a man with serial convictions, wandering around his property. Half-crazed by fear and isolation, having been burgled several times, he lost control. That Ward was a Traveller is irrelevant. Who, putting themselves in Pádraig Nally's position, could say that their response would have been different, or more "proportionate", whatever that is? How many of those clamouring for Nally's continued incarceration, and risibly accusing anyone defending him of "racism", have ever been embroiled in a potential fight to the death with a psychotic thug who, on his last outing, wielded a slash-hook against a police officer?
The meaning of this case is in danger of being lost in a fog of confusion generated by an over-active lobby group and the posturing of pseudo-progressive commentators, who will use any pretext to assert their purportedly superior moral qualities. It has been alleged that the outcome in this case - Mr Nally's conviction on the lesser charge of manslaughter, and the alleged leniency of his six-year sentence - is indicative of a culture placing a reduced value on the lives of Travellers.
On the contrary, had John Ward not been a Traveller, there would be no controversy about this, but instead universal sympathy for a man driven to the end of his tether. If Nally had been a homosexual, cornered in his home by known homophobes, those who clamour now for his continuing incarceration would be writing lengthy articles demanding further legislation to protect gays. Perhaps Nally's problem is that his type is not listed under any of the fashionable victim headings. Although people will feel sorry for the dead man's family, it is not unreasonable to hold that John Ward contributed significantly to his own demise and that Nally, to the extent that his actions may have been disproportionate, was driven over the edge by extreme provocation.
Have we been so pummelled by the logic of the victimologists that we can no longer see a man like Pádraig Nally for what he is: a hard-working smallholder, who, had he been let alone, would have lived out his life without notice beyond the immediate community and qualifying in the end for a brief obituary in his local paper describing him as "an inoffensive man who kept himself to himself"?
Now, his security and peace having been invaded by criminals, he finds that he too has, in a quite literal sense, lost his life.