SISTER’S FURY

39 days in jail is not enough for withholding information about my brother’s murder, my family has been left aside

• Published: 8:00, 1 Oct 2023

THE sister of murder ­victim Paul Gallagher has told of her fury after the man convicted of withholding information in the case was released after just 39 days in jail.

Heartbroken Marie Gallagher, 45, told how the grieving family had been “left aside” with “very little regard or very little thinking of the effect” on them.

Dad-of-one Paul, 26, was found by his sister in a field in Ballymacan, near the Louth border, two days after he was killed in July 2014.

He’d been shot in the back and neck.

Nine years later, only one person has ever been charged in connection with the case.

Sean Barrett, a 35-year-old from Donaghmede in Dublin, had pleaded guilty to withholding information between July 2014 and June 2015.

I

He was eventually charged in 2019 and received a two-year jail sentence, with the last 18 months suspended.

Speaking ahead of the AdVIC Memorial Service for families and friends of victims of homicide, Marie told of her outrage at Barrett being granted early release.

Marie told The Irish Sun on Sunday: “The judge gave 18 months (suspended), six months in prison — and somebody in the prison service, with the Minister for ­Justice’s approval, let him out after 39 days.

“What is the point of a family spending five years going through that, never mind having lost a loved one, to then go, ‘Right, OK, at least he got six months in prison’, and for somebody somewhere else to decide, no, he’s had enough. Thirty days is enough?”

he added: “It’s not as if he was in on anything else. It’s withholding information in relation to a murder . . . anyone else is just going to look and go, ‘Sure, what’s the point?’ There is no deterrent there.

“These are the people supposedly acting for the victim, who is Paul.

FAMILIES FIGHT FOR THEMSELVES

“It seems like the families are left to fight for themselves, for the victim. From where I’m standing, there doesn’t seem to be anyone else up there shouting or roaring about Paul being dead.”

Originally, Barrett told gardai that he and Paul had driven from Donaghmede to Tullyallen, in Co Louth, where two other men also got into his Volkswagen Golf.

He said the four then drove 12km to the field at Ballymacan.

He told gardai that he and Paul had discussed “robbing chip vans”.

However, he lied in his original statement when he said he didn’t know anything about the men who entered the car. A full 11 months later, Barrett eventually told detectives that he knew both men’s Christian names. He also said he had previously driven Paul to meet with one of the men at a property in Co Louth.

Marie said she believes this information would have had a “huge effect” on the case if it had been revealed much earlier.

She said: “Here we are, nine years later, and all we know is how Paul died and what Sean said they did that day. That’s it. The last words I heard Paul saying was, ‘I’ll see you later, son’. So anyone who has information should really reflect on that and come forward, I mean, these people are out there, and it’s unfair.

These people didn’t go out and kill somebody and not come home for somebody who is around them or knows them not to see a slight change in them.

“I would ask them to come forward because the last words from Paul were, ‘I’ll see you later, son’, but later never came.”