Gardaí are to meet the parents of the young man attacked on Grafton Streetat the weekend, writes Kitty Holland
Gardaí investigating the attack on a man in the Grafton Street area of Dublin at the weekend hope to meet his Co Sligo parents this morning.
Their son is in a critical condition.
Lengthy closed circuit television (CCTV) footage recorded around Grafton Street on the night is being examined.
A senior Pearse Street Garda source said the investigating team wanted to assure Paddy and Patricia Duggan, parents of Mr Barry Duggan (35), that they were "doing absolutely everything we can to bring the investigation to a successful conclusion".
Mr Duggan, a librarian working for Dublin City Council, was seriously beaten by a number of young men just after 2 a.m. on Sunday when he appeared to lose his balance wheeling his bike on Grafton Street.
He seems to have fallen into their gathering before being dragged down Lemon Street, a nearby side street, and kicked about the body and head before being left unconscious.
Gardaí on patrol in the area were summoned and Mr Duggan was rushed to St James's Hospital where he remains in a critical condition in intensive care with what gardaí describe as "life-threatening head injuries".
His parents, retired psychiatric nurses, were on holiday in the Canaries with their older son, Peadar, when they got news of the attack on their youngest son. They arrived back in Dublin on Monday night to join Mr Duggan's second brother, Padraig, at his bedside.
Mr Duggan is the youngest in the family. His sister, Emer, who runs Grange pharmacy in Grange, Co Sligo, said yesterday the family were "going through a really bad time".
"We can't say anything at the moment. Mammy and Daddy don't want to say anything. We don't really know how to handle this," she said. "It's just a really bad time."
Local parish priest, Father Michael Donnelly, will travel to Dublin today to give his support to the family.
"They need all the support they can get," he said. People in the rural parish were "in disbelief" and "very upset", he went on.
"I didn't know Barry all that well. He had moved to Dublin shortly before I came here, but people say he was a very quiet, unassuming young man.
"His parents had been retired about 10 or 15 years and they were enjoying their retirement. It is just devastating that this has happened. The whole community is praying for Barry."
A friend who knew Mr Duggan at Summerhill College secondary school in Sligo, but who did not want to be named, described him as "the gentlest guy".
"He's the last guy who would get involved in any kind of trouble, just really inoffensive. And quite a small guy. There's just no way he'd go looking for something like this."
Meanwhile, a file has been sent to the DPP after three young men, all in their 20s, presented themselves with solicitors to Pearse Street gardaí on Monday night.
Two are from Stillorgan in south Dublin, the third from Swords in north county Dublin. One is studying at third level.
They are reported to have been celebrating on Saturday night after watching Leinster's Heineken Cup rugby match victory over Biarritz.
A senior garda involved in the investigation said alcohol had "of course" been centrally involved in the attack, though he added the young men had come forward voluntarily.
"Everything that can be done to assist them will be done," he said.
Gardaí will continue to examine CCTV footage from the Grafton Street area, recorded in the hours around the incident.
"It is a very time-consuming process going through all the footage. We're not looking just at the immediate incident but at footage in the hours leading up to it, checking to see that people were where they said they were at particular times on the night."
A spokesman for Dublin Chamber of Commerce said CCTV security cameras had become "a key instrument in solving many crimes over the past five to 10 years". He added, however, that the ubiquity of CCTV cameras "doesn't seem to be preventing crimes as much as we might have hoped".