Camross to host Justice for Joe demonstration

MOURNED Laois student Joe Drennan’s home village of Camross will host a public gathering this Sunday, as the Justice for Joe campaign gathers pace.

The Camross community is inviting people to attend the event in the village at 12 noon on 16 February to show their support for the Drennan family, who are seeking reform of consecutive sentencing laws.

The event follows a Walk for Justice in Mountrath last Sunday, which was attended by more than 1,000 people.

Meanwhile, more than 11,000 people have signed the family’s online petition ‘Help us get Justice for Joe - Reform Consecutive Sentencing Laws in Ireland’, which has an initial target of 15,000 signatures on change.org.

The Drennan family from Knocknagad, Camross were devastated when the hit-and-run driver who killed Joe (21) in October 2023 received a concurrent six-and-a-half year sentence this month, to run together with an eight-year term for an unrelated offence of discharging a firearm in a drive-by shooting.

The sentencing means that driver Kieran Fogarty will not face any extra time in prison for killing the young Laois man at a bus stop in Limerick city.

The sentence sparked widespread outrage, with Joe’s heartbroken father Tim saying that Fogarty had left his son to die “like a dog on the street”.

The Drennan family launched a social media campaign #JusticeForJoe, which calls for the sentence to be appealed by the DPP and for Fogarty to serve the hit-and-run sentence consecutively.

Independent Laois TD Brian Stanley and Cllr Caroline Dwane-Stanley have backed calls for a review of legislation. In a statement on 10 February, they said: ‘The awful killing of local man Joe Drennan underlines the clear need for changes to sentencing guidelines that are issued to the judiciary.

‘We cannot have a situation where someone, as in Joe Drennan’s case, is unlawfully killed and the perpetrator does not serve one day in prison for the crime.

'We have made representations to the Fianna Fáil Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, to initiate the necessary changes, so as to ensure that sentences run consecutively and not concurrently, as they have in this case.

'Separately, we have also made representation to the DPP, Catherine Pierce, requesting a review of the sentencing in this case and to refer it to the Court of Criminal Appeal for retrial.

‘We cannot tolerate any more situations like this, where some innocent person like Joe Drennan is killed by a person with multiple previous offences and the net result is that they do not serve one day in prison for it.’