An overlooked Kerry scandal that had echoes of earlier shotgun killing

In 1982, the country was stunned by a series of scandals. Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey inspired the sobriquet “GUBU” in describing one but a truly grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented event went essentially unnoticed in Kerry.

On September 2, 1982, Thomas O’Shea of Ardkeragh, Waterville was charged with the attempted murder of his son. He claimed he armed himself with a loaded shotgun in self-defence. The gun was broken-open, he said, until his son kicked the barrel. It snapped shut and discharged, blowing off the top of one of his son’s fingers and wounding him in the side.

The case went to trial in October 1982, in the midst of a series of scandals that had led to a second general election that year. Hence it went virtually unnoticed in the media, even though 38 years earlier the accused was acquitted of the shotgun murder of the man who had been essentially his foster father.