Judge critical of feuding families

A 17-year-old girl who set on another girl at their training course because their families had been feuding, has been ordered to pay money to charity or else she will be fined and receive a criminal conviction.

The girl, who wants a career in childcare, pleaded guilty at the Dublin Children’s Court to engaging in a breach of the peace, which happened at a centre in south Dublin where she was taking part in a training course, on a date last September.

Judge Aingeal Ní Chondúin said she was going to make the girl pay and slated the attitude of the parents involved in the feud. “If they want to get into dog fights, they should think of what they are teaching their children,” she said.

Garda Simon Halpin told Judge Ní Chondúin that the defendant approached the girl and “threatened to beat her up, at this point they had to be pulled apart”. He told the court that blows were thrown until the course co-ordinator told her to leave and that “she was not to return”.

The incident was related to an ongoing feud between two families from the Travelling community in south Dublin.

Defence solicitor Sarah Molloy agreed that there had been a feud but lately it has calmed down and she told the court that the girl’s mother who was present for the case did not approve of her daughter’s behaviour.

Her client contended that the second girl had thrown a cup at here when they were in the training centre’s canteen. However, she was admitting that her behaviour “was unacceptable and amounted to a breach of the peace”.

Since then the girl has been receiving training through FAS and after that hoped to go on to another course in childminding.

Judge Ní Chondúin said the fact that alcohol was not a factor made the incident worse. “The parents are happy to encourage the children to do it. They are happy to go about fighting.”

“I don’t know if they are working but it seems that it is natural for them to be going out fighting,” she said.

She also said that a recorded conviction would be detrimental for the girl’s future employment prospects. “Who would trust her with a child? That is what these families seem to be teaching them.”

She said that if they intended to “get into dog fights I will make them pay”.

She heard that the girl received €104 from FAS, of which she hands up €50 to her mother.

The judge gave the teenage girl two weeks to bring €104, which is to be paid to a children’s charity, to court.

Failure to do so would result in a recorded conviction and a €100 fine, the girl, who had no prior convictions, was warned.