Attack on FF man 'tipsey brawl'

ARMED ASSAULT:AN ALLEGED armed attack on Fianna Fáil TD Dan Breen outside a Portlaoise hotel in 1933, was described as a "tipsey brawl" (sic).

Department of Justice papers reveal that the case against John Dunne for the attack with a gun was withdrawn.

Garda chief of “C” branch PJ Clinton said “I regard the incident as nothing more than a tipsey brawl since politics, as far as can be ascertained, were not referred to. Mr Breen was in my opinion under the influence of drink”.

He added that “one thing is certain, that no shot was fired”. An examination “of the butt of the weapon makes it clear that no magazine had been placed therein for quite a long time.”

Mr Breen, who fought in the War of Independence, became the first anti-Treaty TD to take his seat in the Dáil, in 1927.

He was the author of My Fight for Irish Freedom a memoir of his time in the IRA.

Mr Breen said he had been in the Aird’s hotel with fellow Tipperary Fianna Fáil TD Seán Hayes and Patrick Davern and had a drink in a room off the bar.

“There were two men in the room, one of whom was Dunne, the prisoner, who came up to me and said ‘You buggar or you beggar, what are you doing here?’ I said to him ‘You know what in ordinary English the word ‘buggar’ means.’”

“He said ‘you are a buggar and a beggar both’. I then hit him and he went away.”

Mr Breen said when he was walking by Kelly’s hotel, “I recognised the man who called me a bugger. He pulled a gun and I rushed at him and took the gun from him. When I took the gun I hit him with my fist, and then hit him with the gun with the intention of making him unconscious.”

Another witness John Rutherford said he had been walking home when John Dunne called him over and told him that he had had “a bloody row with Dan Breen”. Mr Rutherford did not know at the time who Dan Breen was, said that just then two strangers and a man he knew approached them. “One of the strangers (Breen) came up to Dunne and said to him ‘you f***ing sucker you won’t put a gun up to me again’.”

“Dunne and the stranger scrambled for the gun, the stranger getting possession of it. He threw the gun along the street and started punching Dunne in the face.” The accused spent a number of days in hospital.