The Irish Courts Service have brokered a deal with local Ballina, Co Tipperary publican, Mr Michael O’Donovan, to use his licenced hostelry as a Courthouse, with Judge Aeneas McCarthy presiding, looking down upon gardaí, solicitors, court users and criminals from his raised platform stage, normally the preserve of performers John Spillane, Mary Coughlan etc and the other bands who regularly perform at O’Donovans Bar.
Beneath disco lights, (switched off I hasten to add when the court is in session) in full view of favoured tipple labels Heineken, Guinness and Carlsberg, not to mention bottles of gin, vodka etc, now dispensers of this country’s justice sit in true American Wild West historical Saloon fashion, and will continue to do so for a trial period over the next three months. I should point out that the bar is not open during these court sessions.
This new venue brings an ends to the 64 mile round trip to Ennis, that court officials and criminals have been forced to take since September, when court sittings were suspended with the Kincora Hotel going into receivership.
Main reasons given for choosing this new venue was the difficulty experienced by criminals not being able to get to Ennis Court because of a lack of direct public transport. No doubt the Health Service Executive will now be organising a similar setup for Diabetes sufferers and those who need weekly Kidney Dialysis in Limerick hospital and who must drive a 96 mile round trip just to stay alive.
Alan Shatter TD, Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence, was not on hand to officially open this new venue.
Me, well I blame this rather unusual court setting now forced on us here in Tipperary, on Angela Dorothea Merkel, Chancellor of Germany and the current state of the Euro.
In fact a middle aged male German tourist recently, on his first visit here to Tipperary, recently confided in me, the following story.
According to him he had visited one of our houses of “ill repute.” (No, before you ask, I didn’t get an address or a mobile telephone number.) The lady in charge asked him to be seated and sends over a young lady to entertain him. They sat and talked, frolicked a little and drunk a bit. He whispered a request in her ear and she gasped and runs away, screaming “No I will not.”
Seeing this, the lady in charge quickly sent over a more experienced lady to further entertain the gentleman. They also again sat together and talked, frolicked a little, laughed a lot, drunk a bit. He again whispered into her ear, and she also screamed, “No never in a month of Sundays.” and quickly left the scene.
The madam naturally was very surprised that this ordinary, good looking man was asking for something so outrageous, that her two most experienced girls refused to have anything to do with him. So, intrigued, having never seen anything like this in all her years of operating her business, she decided to find out what this man wanted that had made her girls so angry and uncooperative.
She approaches her unsatisfied tourist customer, sits and talks with him. They frolic, they giggle, they drink and then she sits on his lap. My tourist friend leans forwards and whispers in her ear, “Can I pay you in Euro?”
Still, in the words of Eamon de Valera: “When we have done our best, we can, as a united people, take whatever may befall, with calm courage and confidence that this old nation will survive and if death should come to many of us, death is not the end.”
Yea, listen I will leave the above text to each of you, our discerning readers, to decide which is the biggest joke.
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