71-year-old farmer accused of attacking niece at farm gate in family dispute over land

Ms Morrissey told the court that she was the executor of her parents’ estate, where her mother left the farm to four children.

Ms Morrissey said Tony Morrissey, her late father, John’s brother, was contesting the will.

She said, “He believes he is a beneficiary of my mother’s estate, which he is not.”

Tony Morrissey denies the assault charges and his lawyer, Cormac McCarthy, told the court that Mr Morrissey had no intention of hitting Caroline Morrissey in any way. Mr McCarthy said what happened was accidental.

Mr McCarthy said that “there was no strike or strike and this is part of a larger estate issue and one of a number of events that have occurred”.

He said: “There is due process in such matters – not on a farm at a private gate.”

Mr McCarthy said Tony Morrissey had farmed the lands in question for the past 50 years.

Recalling the August 8, 2021 farm gate incident, Caroline Morrissey said she told Tony Morrissey, “You are not disregarding my parents’ will”.

She said, “Tony started screaming and screaming like a hyena … Tony put his hands up and punched me in the face and threw me to the ground.”

Ms Morrissey said: “I’m sad… he’s cutting off the next two generations of the family for no reason.”

Ms Morrissey said when Tony Morrissey first saw himself and her sister Julie in the country that day, “he said we should enter his country and get off his country or he would bring the Gardai on us”.

Mrs Morrissey said the locks had been changed to the lands at the farm gate.

She said: “We could not enter the country because our locks had been swapped and there were cattle in the top field.”

The sisters put their own lock on the gate and Caroline Morrissey said that Tony Morrissey and another man picked the lock on the gate.

Mr McCarthy said Tony Morrissey had to come through the gate on the day as he was planning to spread manure.

Mr McCarthy said Caroline Morrissey previously stopped Tony Morrissey on the public road and yelled obscenities and called him “a land grab”. Caroline Morrissey denied this.

In her evidence, Caroline Morrissey’s sister Julie said she was at the gate and witnessed Tony Morrissey’s alleged attack on her sister.

Julie said: “There is no justification for my uncle hitting my sister just because she is doing her job. She didn’t want the job, but she got the job because she’s the oldest and fulfilling our parents’ wish.”

Julie Morrissey said she paid for a mass “to say for his forgiveness and the disrespect he has shown”.

She said: “It’s our country and the country is what our parents gave us. It’s not his country. It’s our country. He committed trespassing.”

Mr McCarthy said what happened at the farm gate between Mr Morrissey and Caroline Morrissey was an accident. In response, Julie Morrissey said, “There’s no way this was accidental.”

Julie Morrissey said: “He knew he had gone too far – he knew he had crossed the line.”

Judge Mary Larkin said the question of who owns the land would be decided before the Circuit Court and the High Court and that she was only interested in the alleged attack.

The two Morrissey sisters had traveled from their home in the UK to testify and Judge Larkin adjourned the case until next month to hear the rest of the state case and the defence.