A year on, Sligo pensioner Tom Niland still in ICU and neighbours are still locking their doors
Tom Niland: The 74-year-old farmer remains in ICU unable to walk, or eat, since a violent incident in his Sligo home last January.
Anna Calpin still can’t get over her neighbour Tom Niland’s reaction to the bad news on St Stephen’s Day.
She was visiting the 74-year-old farmer in the ICU of Sligo University Hospital and mentioned one of her family dogs, Allie, had to be put down. Living just across the road from the Calpins on the main Sligo to Ballina road at Skreen, Tom had often looked after their two dogs when they were away.
“Sure you told me that already,” Tom said to her. Ms Calpin was gobsmacked. She had mentioned Allie’s death before but there had been no response from him at the time.
It was all the more amazing because Tom will have been on life support a year this Wednesday, January 18. He is on a ventilator, unable to breathe independently, eat, swallow, talk, or move from the neck down since a violent incident at his home that night.
As his closest neighbour, Ms Calpin is one of the few people allowed in to visit Tom. She had had to steel herself going in to see him on a day when he traditionally joined her and her family for a festive dinner.
“I was going in with a heavy heart and I was saying ‘I’m offering this up today now’ but I came out with a light heart,” she told the .
“He was talking to me. Even the nurses were saying he was so excited to get down to Mass on Christmas Day and he would have been a great Mass-goer. I felt great coming out and I was just so excited but I know he hasn’t been great since. I just got him obviously on a very good day,” she said.
His response to Ms Calpin was a rare chink of light on an otherwise dark horizon for Tom. Despite medics’ best efforts to wean him off the ventilator, he still can’t fully breathe on his own. One eye remains closed.
“He hasn’t eaten anything in a year and can’t move from the neck down, so it’s very bad,” said his cousin and closest relative, Michael Walsh.
“His arms never move, they have them folded like that. Sometimes he looks down and he’s kind of looking like ‘I can’t move’. He can’t even get out of bed, he has to be hoisted out just to get him in a chair to get him vertical to take the pressure off his chest and give him a chance to breathe on his own,” he said.
“The treatment they have him on is called immunoglobulin. This chemical has been successful to a degree in stimulating the nerves to grow but it’ll only go so far and after so long, it’s not looking good,” he said.
Tom has managed to whisper to Mr Walsh, who says he can understand him.
“The last day I was in, as I walked around the corner the nurse said, ‘There’s somebody here to see you Tom’ and he looked and as he saw me, you could see his face kind of form a smile and then he mouthed ‘Michael’ so that was a good attempt. To us, it’s a big thing,” he said.
Mr Walsh said there “hasn’t been an awful lot of progress” and because Tom is lucid and aware of his condition, doctors believe “he could be very depressed as well”.
While he originally knew what had happened to him, a sudden deterioration affected Tom’s memory and Mr Walsh believes he can no longer recall the real reason for his present circumstances.
“He said something like ‘crossing the road’ when asked by a medic what happened to him. He thinks he was hit by a car crossing the road,” Mr Walsh said.
“The other thing is that he can’t swallow. The mucus accumulates in his mouth and they come then at certain times and use suction at his throat, you can see he hates it, you can see him grimace with that. So, I discovered that he doesn’t attempt to talk as much because his mouth fills with mucus and he doesn’t want them coming at him,” he said.
“He’s very vulnerable to the current spike in flu going around,” he added. “If he got something like Covid that would finish him because he’s bad enough. They have him in a corner of the ICU about the size of a kitchen and he’d be even more separated from the rest [of the patients] but even so, infection floats around in the air. We mask up every time we go in and I quickly drop the mask for a few seconds so he knows it’s me,” said Mr Walsh.
The future prognosis is bleak. “The only thing they are hoping for now is to try and get him off the respirator so they could move him out of ICU. Even if they could get him out of ICU, it would be to long-term care in a facility. He won’t go home. Unless there is a miracle, he won’t see Skreen again,” he said.
Everyone who knows him describes Tom as a “gentle giant”. To see him suffering has angered all who know him in West Sligo. The local Skreen-Dromard Community Council meets once a month and Tom is always mentioned.
Such was the initial public outrage at what happened to him, the council discussed putting up a “substantial reward”, according to their treasurer James McLoughlin.
“There was a lot of anger that above all people Tom Niland was the last person in the parish you would think was going to be the next victim. He was a big strong tall man, probably 6ft 3in, very well built, broad in the shoulders, quite capable of handling himself,” Mr McLoughlin said.
Ironically, the last time he spoke to Tom was at a vigil in the Community Centre following the killing of 23-year-old school teacher Ashling Murphy in Tullamore on January 12 last year.
“Tom walked in by me and he was standing over to the left with other locals. That was on a Sunday. I couldn’t believe it when I heard about it down in the local shop the following day,” he said. Customers in Collery’s shop declined to comment but did say they “want justice for Tom”.
“I think that really rattled the whole of West Sligo, not just Skreen or Dromore West, because they knew Tom,” Mr Walsh said.
“We were afraid in the beginning, we were all locking our doors for no reason then you know, you go back to normality again,” said Mr McLoughlin. “Even though I know there was a break-in in Skreen last weekend and when something like that happens you stop and think,” he said.
There is no 24-hour rolling Garda presence at the nearby Skreen Garda Station. “People wanted more Garda presence in the area which we don’t have,” said Mr McLoughlin.
“The old garda retired last year and there’s now a part-time garda appointed on a temporary basis and she has to cover three stations between Skreen, Collooney and Coolaney. She’s only there for a few hours a day. They have a clinic there on Tuesdays from 10am-1pm if anybody wants a passport signed or a dog licence but other than that…” he said.
The Sligo-based superintendent Mandy Gaynor and other senior gardaí held a crime awareness meeting in Skreen before Christmas and assured locals the Garda station was not going to close, but admitted there would not be a full-time Garda presence there, Mr McLoughlin explained.
In the same area, a 51-year-old man was knocked unconscious in an attack at his home on December 12.
According to Mr McLoughlin, there have been at least five robberies in the area in the past month or so, four break-ins at private residential homes and one attempted break-in.
“It was rumoured that people were coming in from outside the area, staying in a local B&B and surveying the area for opportunities,” he said.
“There were houses broken into in the middle of the day, at least four in the last month and an attempted one last Sunday on the coast road. There was no one at home at the time,” he said.
Homeowners are living in constant fear and doing what they can to stay safe, Mr Walsh said.
He admitted he turns a key in “every door in the house, not just the outside ones.”
“If somebody breaks in, I won’t make it easy for them and I’ll know by the time they get down to where I am, and I’ll be ready for them,” he said.
“A lot of people have said the applications for gun licences went up in this area. There would have been renewals anyway but there’s definitely been a big uptake in that,” he said.
This is echoed by other local sources, who told the : “Everyone in the parish must have a gun, every Tuesday there’s a few [gun licence applications] in to the local Garda station.”
Gardaí have been asked to provide gun licence figures for the past two years for the area but as of the time of going to press, had yet to furnish them.
Would Mr Walsh consider getting a gun at this stage? “I would yeah, I did have one years ago and I let it go, but I might now,” he said.
“I don’t have one and I’m not getting one,” MrMcLoughlin said. “I know since the meeting with the guards here that a few people have got in security cameras and have better security at their house though,” he added.
In March of last year, six weeks after the violent incident at Tom Niland’s home, over a dozen county councillors called on Sligo County Council to seek funding for a €100,000 pilot scheme to upgrade existing CCTV systems for businesses at strategic locations along main roads throughout the entire county. They wanted to offer grants of €1,000 to cover the cost of a number-plate recognising camera, strategically focused on access roads in a bid to cut crime and deter would-be criminals from targeting areas without CCTV.
The response they got was disappointing — officials spoke of “significant GDPR implications” and said most local authorities have their CCTV cameras switched off as footage cannot be used due to GDPR restrictions.
The issue was passed on to the Joint Policing Committee, where more concerns were raised over data protection. According to local independent councillor Michael Clarke, the matter remains “stuck in the mud” this week, as Tom marks a full year since he last walked.
GDPR concerns are not a strong enough reason not to install cameras along main roads according to Michael Walsh who has previously worked as a GDPR adviser to businesses.
“Nobody has to be afraid of that unless they have something to hide. That’s always been the case, so they’re using these things like GDPR as a cover, that’s an excuse,” he said.
Three men are currently before the courts charged with aggravated burglary with a knife, assault causing serious harm and false imprisonment of Tom Niland at his home in Doonflynn, Skreen on January 18 2022.
Francis Harman, 54, of Nephin Court, Killala Road, Ballina, Co Mayo; John Clarke, 33, of Carrowkelly, Ballina, Co Mayo; and John Irving, 28, of Shanwar, Foxford, Co Mayo, are due to stand trial on the above charges later this year.
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