Pat looks back on 40 years of service

From being shot at twice by the General’s gang in inner city Dublin and earning two Scott Medals for his bravery, to keeping traffic moving in Kinnegad before the M4 was built, Sergeant Pat McNicholas packed a lot into 40 years as a garda, and he has the stories to prove it.

The well-known father of two retired from An Garda Síochána on Thursday March 31, exactly 40 years to the day since he joined the force. March 31 was also the day that he was promoted to the rank of sergeant in 1995.

Born in Swinford, County Mayo in 1962, Pat’s family moved to a Land Commission farm in Vilanstown, Gaybrook when he was only 10 months old.

“It was one of those big estates that was divided up. The McNultys and ourselves moved up on the same day, March 28, 1963. There was a big influx of families,” Pat told the Westmeath Examiner.

After completing his primary education in Gainstown NS, Pat went to Mullingar Technical College, now known as Mullingar Community College, and completed his Leaving Cert in 1980.

That summer he got a job in Dublin at the insurance firm PMPA on Wolfe Tone Street. Although he says that he wasn’t sad about leaving his job renewing people’s insurance policies when he was accepted into the guards in the spring of 1982, it was while working in PMPA that he met his wife Siobhan.

“It was a job I couldn’t wait to get out of. It was all paper-based and indoor. I was always fond of working outdoors. We made great friends – friends that we [he and Siobhan] are both in contact with.”

Pat was accepted into the force in the spring of 1982. The gardaí embarked on a huge recruitment drive in the early 1980s and with employment opportunities few and far between unless you wanted to take the boat to the UK or the plane to America, the guards was an attractive proposition.

There was employment security in the guards, but Pat’s first station after his graduation from Templemore in September 1982 was in the Dublin suburb of Crumlin, the home turf of ‘The General’ Martin Cahill and his gang. It also coincided with the first wave of heroin into the city, a wave that led to an unprecedented surge in violent crimes and ravaged inner city communities, including Crumlin.

It was a true “baptism of fire” for Gda McNicholas and the five other newly graduated officers posted to the station, Pat says. With the help of his colleagues, Pat quickly got to know Crumlin and the surrounding area, but he had to change a few of his country ways.

“That time we would do an eight-hour shift and it was seven nights on the trot. With a colleague or maybe a duty sergeant, you’d walk the beat from one minute past 10 to one o’clock, when you’d come in for your meal break. You had three quarters of an hour for your meal break and you were out until six o’clock in the morning. We got to know every square inch of the Crumlin district by walking it.

“The first couple of weeks when I was out on the beat, the fact that I had come from rural Ireland meant that if I met someone on the beat I’d say ‘good morning, good evening, how are you?’ and they’d look at you as if you had 40 heads!”

In 1987, Pat and his colleague John Leonard were on patrol in a squad car one afternoon when The General’s gang robbed Buckley’s Building Providers in Robinhood Industrial Estate in Walkinstown.

“We [Pat was driving the squad car] were in the other end of Crumlin when we got the call. Working it out between ourselves, we figured out the ratrun that they might take. We weren’t on the back road for three minutes when we met the car and four gougers coming.

“We turned and went after them. They were heavily armed and John was shot through the arm, not fatally. They shot at me too. I wouldn’t glorify it and I don’t talk about it a lot, it was one of those things.”

Outnumbering Pat and his injured colleague, both of whom were unarmed, the gang members got away. But they left without the £12,000 that they had just stolen. If it had been today, the gang would not have evaded justice, but forensic science was a lot more rudimentary in the 1980s, Pat says.

Around a year later, Pat was on patrol in garda van in Walkinstown, when he and his fellow officer Tony McCarthy got a call over the radio about two suspects that drove off when their vehicle was approached by gardaí who were responding to a call from a member of the public.

One of the two passengers in the car was The General’s then right-hand-man Seamus ‘Shavo’ Hogan, one of the most feared criminals in the country.

Pat and his colleague successfully predicted the route that Hogan’s car would take. Following a chase that ended when the criminals drove down a cul-de-sac, Hogan and his colleague jumped out of their car and ran in separate directions. Pat followed one of the balaclava-wearing criminals in the van.

“He got up on the footpath ans wad trying to get into waste ground [by climbing a wall]. Before he got to the waste ground, the front left of the patrol van impacted with his body,” Pat explained, using the sort of official language he would have used in his report.

If the van hadn’t “impacted” with the criminal’s body, it could have been a very different outcome for Pat or his colleague.

“He tried to get a shot off at the last second, but thankfully he didn’t get a chance. Literally as he turned around [with the gun], I put the boot to the floor and put him up against the wall.”

Hogan had been wearing a balaclava, like the gang members Pat encountered the year before.

“We pulled the balaclava off him and we couldn’t believe who we were after getting. He was one of the suspects from the year before and was arrested in connection with it.”

Scott Medal

In 1988 Pat and his colleague John Leonard received the Scott Medal (Bronze) for bravery following their encounter with the four armed gang members the year before. Twelve months later, he became one of only three officers to be awarded the medal for a second time, although this time it was of the silver variety. Tony McCarthy was also awarded a medal.

Being awarded one Scott Medal is a landmark event in any Garda’s career, but to be awarded two is so rare that Pat is one of only three officers in the history of the force to be part of that very exclusive club.

A few days before Christmas in 1989 Pat received an early present when he was transferred to Kinnegad Garda Station. The timing couldn’t have come better as Pat and Siobhan married that April and had built a house in Mullingar.

After cutting his policing teeth in the inner city where young recruits “sank or swam”, it took Pat a little bit of time to get used to life on the beat in a small town.

“In Kinnegad in 1989 and 1990 when I’d walk down the main street on the beat – we had only a Honda 500 at the time at the station – people would be mad to get to know you and interact with you, but I’d be distant.

“If you were working in the station in Crumlin at that time, the phone was ringing every 10/15 seconds. In Kinnegad, you might open the station at 10am and between then and 1am the phone might ring twice. I would actually lift the receiver to see if it was working.

“God rest him, Liam Conlon was my first sergeant there when I came down. He was a wealth of knowledge and moulded me back to rural policing.

The busiest days for guards stationed in Kinnegad then were Fridays when people from the west and north west based in Dublin drove home for the weekends, and Sundays, when they made their return journeys.

Before the motorways were built, Kinnegad was one of the most infamous bottlenecks in the country and Harry’s one of the most famous watering holes. Friday and Sundays on traffic duty could be hectic, but Pat has fond memories of those days.

“Harry’s was alive, it was buzzing at that time and the problem we had was you had four, six, or eight buses trying to pull in at the same time. We would try to facilitate them and get them in as far off the road as possible that they wouldn’t obstruct traffic. We were trying to work with the community because Harry’s was a huge employer, as was Jack’s.

“Every Sunday evening Liam Conlon would detail one of us to stand at the junction at Macaris. No matter what was happening, there had to be a guard standing there to let the traffic out. If you didn’t have a guard there, all of the traffic from Mayo would get through but none of the traffic from Galway. That was from around 4 o’clock to around nine or ten that night. Five or six hours directing traffic.”

The garda there didn’t Ireland’s most vicious criminals shooting at you, but traffic duty in Kinnegad brought its own challenges.

“The one thing was you had to be mentally alert. The levels of concentration needed because if you went to sleep on the junction that’s when you’d have an accident. The banter we used to get from people.”

On March 31, 1989, Pat was promoted to sergeant, which led to a transfer to Baileboro in Cavan after four very happy years in Kinnegad. After five months, he was on the move again, back to Westmeath, and the station in Rochfortbridge.

When Pat started in Rochfortbridge, the station was under-resourced to say the least, but what it lacked in equipment – the station didn’t have a squad car and officers had to use their own cars when they went on patrol or borrowed vehicles from Mullingar – it more than made up for in the quality of the officers, John Walsh and Vinnie Hoey “two stalwarts”.

Rochfortbridge underwent a major transformation in the late 1990s and early noughties when the Celtic Tiger building boom doubled the population of the village in a few short years, many of the new arrivals from Dublin, where they commuted back to every morning for work.

Twenty years later and Rochfortbridge is a thriving community, and many of those Celtic Tiger arrivals are an integral part of it, the GAA club in particular reaping the benefits of such a significant population increase.

Despite the changes in the ‘Bridge, Pat says that by and large serving in the area was an enjoyable experience, and there was “zero” crime such as burglaries committed by local people.

“It was very easy policing in Rochfortbridge,” he said.

One aspect of the job that Pat won’t miss, he admits, are the admin duties that became increasingly onerous as the years went on.

“The pulse system was meant to take away paperwork and everyone at all levels of the organisation will tell you that it didn’t. It is heading for reform at the minute and it is long overdue. That came in probably 1998/1999 and when it came in first, it was going to be the panacea to everything. Sweet mother of God, it just got worse and worse!”

Whether it was in Crumlin, Kinnegad or Rochfortbridge, Pat enjoyed his interactions with the public and his many colleagues down through years.

When it came to dealing with people, Pat said he always tried to be “respectful”, “decent” and “fair”.

“If someone is abusing you, keep your head, keep your cool, let your training come out and you’ll have nothing to worry about. Just do your job to the best of your ability and without malice.”

On the night of his retirement on March 31, there was a party in Bagnall’s, attended by past and present colleagues, friends and family, including Siobhan and the couple’s two children Dean and Shóna, both of whom are teachers.

Regarding his retirement, Pat, who thanked everyone who attended his party, says he is looking forward to taking a bit of time out after 40 years of service and hasn’t made any big plans yet.

“We’ll take it easy for a while, do a bit more gardening, do more with poultry. Siobhan is on to to me to go into the garage, do something with some of my antiques and rather than buying, to start selling!

“It will take a bit of readjusting but I am looking forward to a new era. It will end a great year if Tyrrellspass win the championship and Mayo finally lift Sam!”