Nally still fears safety ten years on

Nally still fears safety ten years on


Michael Commins and Ciara Galvin

TEN years on from killing a man who was trespassing on his land, Padraig Nally said he still fears for his safety.
The farmer from Cross made the comments speaking to RTÉ Radio, ten years on from shooting traveller John ‘Frog’ Ward on his farm on October 14, 2004.
Mr Nally said he is still fearful there could be ‘repercussions at any time’.
The 70 year old was acquitted of murder after a trial in 2005, but was convicted of manslaughter. He was subsequently acquitted of manslaughter following a retrial in December 2006.
Speaking about living in fear, Mr Nally said ‘you have to expect the worst. People that were raided once, they usually come back again [a] second time and it’s nearly always old people they are targeting’.
Following the shooting of Ward, Mr Nally became the centre of a countrywide debate about the right to defend one’s home.

Book launch
The case, which is documented and examined in newly launched book ‘Unless By Invitation - Crimes that Shocked Ireland, by Cróna Esler, has in time led to a new bill of rights for property owners who seek to take the necessary means to protect their property from aggressors.
Former MEP, Jim Higgins, who performed the launch, said the new bill should, and probably will be known as the Padraig Nally Bill.
Mr Higgins told the large gathering that fiction never held much appeal for him. He loved stories about real people and real life situations and said Cróna, Deputy Editor of The Western People, had delivered a superb book on her first venture into this realm. It was balanced, reflective, incisive and well crafted and he felt it would serve as a touchstone book for this kind of material and the vast outreach of the cases chosen by her.
Apart from the Nally case, the book takes a look at several other crimes and murders that have shocked Ireland over the last decade or two, including the case of the Gilmore brothers from Thomastown, Hollymount.
Padraig Nally, the subject of much of the book, sat quietly a few rows from the front. The man who was propelled into the national limelight on the fateful day back in 2004, also provided the final line for the book, something that Jim Higgins alluded to in his own conclusion … “I did not go looking for trouble. It came looking for me.”
In his radio interview, the farmer, who still lives alone on his farm in Cross, said he was living in fear the day he shot Ward.
“I was scared. There was a man behind me and a man in front of me and I didn’t know if there was two men gone in here or not,” Nally told the national radio station.
Mr Nally said he was surprised he was jailed, but said he got used to life in Portlaoise prison. He served eleven months in prison, in total.
Going against the advice of friends when he was released, Nally returned to his farm, stating ‘where else would you go?’.
“It was your home and where you were living and where you were brought up, so it was very hard to leave it,” said Mr Nally, who also extended his sympathy to the family of Mr Ward.