Shotgun confiscated after complaint from employer’s wife

JOHN CARTHY’S shotgun was taken from him following a complaint by the wife of a local builder with whom he had a falling out.

Garda Peter Earley of Granard station told the tribunal he was approached in the summer of 1998 by Evelyn McLoughlin who told him about the row with her husband, Brendan, for whom Mr Carthy had been working, and expressed concerns about Mr Carthy having a gun.

He accepted Mr Carthy later went back to work for Mr McLoughlin as recently as days before his death.

Mrs McLoughlin had a contract to tend the shrubs around the garda station and Garda Earley knew her and took her concerns seriously. He reported them to the duty sergeant. The following day he learned Mr Carthy’s shotgun had been taken from him.

He returned the gun to Mr Carthy on November 13, 1998, after being dispatched to check that he had the required lockable steel storage cabinet in his house.

Garda Earley said he got to know Mr Carthy in 1991 when he first applied for a firearms certificate, which was granted without difficulty, and he always found him “very pleasant“.

Another witness, James Clarke, director of services for housing and planning with Longford County Council, gave evidence of the importance of the Carthy house to the family. He said, despite an application in 1997 by Mr Carthy’s mother, Rose, for a new cottage to be built to replace the decaying family home, she later wrote asking them not to demolish the old house as it had been a family home since 1906. It was her late husband’s wish that it remain the homestead. She later consented to its demolition, when informed the council would not build a new one if it was still standing.

The tribunal has heard evidence that the family were days away from moving into the new cottage when Mr Carthy died and that he was ambivalent about the move because of the many memories that attached to his childhood home.