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Where? Strandhill, Co Sligo
What type of house? Detached house on the side of Knocknarea Mountain
How many bedrooms and bathrooms? 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
When did you move in? 2015
Name: Aoife Porter
Age: 41
Occupation: Digital Marketer, founder of Bua Marketing
Who else lives there? Husband and three kids
The view; we have sweeping views of Ballisodare Bay. We can see seal colonies in the bay all year around and the house is south-facing. We are bathed in the most glorious daylight all day. The house is only a five minute drive from Strandhill village. We originally were looking for a house in Strandhill village but when this house came up, the magic of the views won us over.
The view from the couch in the living room. We can sit and weather watch all day long. Our living area incorporates our kitchen, living and dining area. It used to be three separate rooms but when we got in there I couldn’t wait to get a view of the bay from the kitchen so we knocked it all into one with a double height ceiling.
In the corner we have a Stuv stove which is so cosy for evening hangs. The view from the couch is about as good as it gets. We can see the Ox mountains, Culleenamore beach, Ballisodare Bay – and all in total privacy.
The bathrooms. We didn’t have the budget when we were renovating to do them up. They still have scallop-shaped sinks and toilets.
7am: We wake in a variety of rooms, depending on which child has moved where during the night. Our three year old still doesn’t like to sleep on his own.
8:30am: We then have close on two hours before having to get the kids to school which starts off pretty relaxed and then turns into a frantic dash once 8.30 hits. I head for my office in the village with the older two kids.
9:10am: I have the two kids delivered to school and am at my desk by 9.10.
2pm: At weekends the mornings are a bit more chilled with pancakes and coffee and lounging on the couch weather watching. In the afternoon we tend to make a break for the village and have a little surf with the kids, beach hangs and always a Shells Cafe coffee.
5pm: Most evenings are spent in the kitchen / playroom or on the longer evenings on the back deck. We also installed an in-ground trampoline last year; best investment ever. The kids spend hours every day on it and have hands down the best view a trampoline could ever have.
8:30pm: We try to get the kids down by 8.30, but it’s often later as they never want to leave that bloody trampoline!
10pm: Bedtime for us is early. We have early risers so we do our best to catch-up ourselves with early bedtimes. Not always possible!
We would put dimmers on all the lights in the kitchen / living room and do more sound-proofing. We have a double height ceiling in the main living area – the noise once the kids start fighting is deafening. And we’d put the concrete floor in the whole house (with underfloor heating)
I would love, love, love to replace all the windows in the house; we inherited a mish mash of PVC that are fine but they don’t enhance the view the way I know amazing windows could. If any window companies out there want a collab, please holler!
We were really lucky, John Monahan of NOJI Architects in Sligo, is a very good friend. He designed the house renovation for us and took our creative vision and made it practical and better. We definitely have ambitious plans for a phase 2.0.
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Anyone who genuinely is interested in supporting the force should want the bad ones removed, but we never hear the good stories. I’d like to tell a good story. One night my sister complained to a neighbor that his truck was parked in a way that blocked the street. He slashed her tires then ran after her husband with the knife. 6 Minutes later a van arrived. Prior incidents left my sister with zero faith in the Gardi and she told them that to their faces
The senior one gave her his personal mobile and told her if she was scared at any time to call him. He then walked closer to her, looked her in the eye and with a kind of steely determination said ”I’m not like the one you met on the road, I’m going to do everything I can to restore your faith in us”. He sent help every single time (in one case an armed colleague) to her house when the guy did some things to intimidate her.
They’d done a good job with our statements and talking to the judge to the point where as the senior officer said ”ok I’d like to call…” the judge said ”not necessary, this ones easy”. He terminated the guys license (thus livelihood) and sent him to prison for a year. I could tell 1-2 bad stories too, but they get heard on their own.
We sat there in a weird kind of shock, Jesus we actually got justice…
It should also be taken into account here that the legislation being utilised by Gardaí in these circumstances is completely out of date and from another era entirely. The politicians are quite happy to let the Gardaí take the flak here but many of these problems have been caused by a lack of political will to provide strong legislative support to our police to deal with such situations.
I once stopped a fella beating the bejasus outta his misses in town, she thanked me by jumping on my back and helped him beat me! Domestics are mad Ted!
Yeah you guys are right in a way, it’s hard to know how your intervention will be received and domestic violence is not always black and white. However, in these cases, the person being assaulted asked the gardai for assistance. They weren’t given that help. In fact as once of the case studies states, they were told not to ask for help the next time. Regardless of the type of assault the guards have a duty to protect us once a then call is made. Domestic violence is particularly abhorrent as the victim is left with the abuser in their own home, the guards should treat that situation with more gravity, not less.
The worst assaults happen behind closed doors not on our streets..
Actually I don’t want to hear about the good individuals in the force, I want the entire lot to change. If I was to say the one thing that had to go it would be arrogance. In my experience they treat the public like we are idiots and they treat victims like they are criminals. That’s a feature and an attitude throughout the entire force.
Really? You’ve met all 13,000 guards eh?
“DV is often reciprocal. in other words there are 2 of them in a relationship at it.”
I don’t know why this comment was downvoted, the real statistics are that DV is around 60% reciprocal, with the remainder evenly split between men and women.
the biggest problem with domestic cases is probably the reluctance of the witnesses.
There is obviously a serious issue regarding DV, and the follow up of reporting same, in our country and I’m glad this report has highlighted the issue. However, I think the Gardaí get a lot of unfair criticism in general. I must say any dealings I have had with Gardaí have been mostly positive.
By far the most serious issue is the massive underreporting of female on male domestic violence.
Nothing will change because laziness and a couldn’t care less attitude is systemic in the entire organisation . Too many senior gardai paid big salaries and do nothing and nobody oversees what exactly they contribute to policing
Proper investment in reorganisation, infrastructure and new management (why waste time training dinosaurs?) will give us a police service we can be proud of and one we can all respect.
The men and women who serve us need to have confidence that their efforts are recognised, and that the old method of district policing where the senior ranks play sheriff needs to be eliminated.
It’s a small country. Do we really need that many divisions?
Once there are children involved,social workers should visit unannounced!! So many children have fallen through the net, it makes me sick!!
Well maybe, but this would face a lot of backlash too, as it would be seen as increasing the rights of social workers to interfere with families.
What exactly is the problem with saying there’s two of them in it?
Depends on who you say it to and whether you use it as an excuse to avoid dealing with the situation. It’s dismissive, that’s the problem.
There is no problem with it but when an arrest is made it is usually a male who is arrested which is what feminists crave.
The other fact which they ignore is that almost 60% of all domestic abuse is mutual.
lol…
Bandon Garda station have some really interesting tapes.
just doin me duty…
Thanks Snorre,
Hang on to those tapes for me, could get awkward if they went on the missing list.
those idiots should be sacked for negligence
i can’t believe most of the comments here, i was ready to go on how the guards treat women and dv but to see most people agreeing with the guards blaming the women saying ah if you jump in SHE’LL only start hitting you and the one that realy annoys me i bet ye she hits him and the dont annoy him let him sleep it off. No wounder the guards dont think domestic violence is a crime when most of society in ireland doesnt think its a crime,Its a sad day for me today to reliase this as the people i know are disgusted by this yet most comments here does not reflect that, i realy thought ireland had grown up.
More gutter press journalism, you’d get more accurate unbiased news in the Beano than The Journal.
Actually I think this series is quite refreshing and it’s probably the only outlet that could report this way. Can you see the times being effective? We have a problem with the police force. No harm in shining a light on it.
Hard to say whether it isn’t around as much today maybe, but there has always been an inherent inner hidden aggression in the Irish psyche I think. We can flip from smile to punch in the blink of an eye, especially the older generations. That Oirish overly friendly thing was always a bit of a fake psychotic act I thought. How people act when the doors are closed is something else entirely.
I love Ryan Carrols story
What a safe place to be to post comments like two sides to every story , pair if them in it, etc ,, this attitude leaves the victim male or female with even less hope and more insecurity , but it makes on lookers feel comfortable and allows abuse to become a way of life , some times it’s important to reach out that little bit more
The majority of domestic violence incidents are reciprocal, whether you like it or not.
Interim Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan said she was aware that some victims had felt let down by the gardaí.
Robert Olson, Chief Inspector of the Garda Síochána says, We had about 11,000 domestic violence incidents and there were only 287 cases where somebody got arrested. That needs to be looked at very closely, we’re concerned about that.”
Kindly get a grip Noirin,,,,,,,, According to the figures given above, the ”Some victims” that you are referring to shockingly relates to 10,713 reported incidents of Domestic Violence for which there was no arrest.
How in God’s name can you even stand there and try to play down such an enormous figure to make it sound like only a handful of people were affected?
I think you’ll find that these figures speak for themselves,,,
It is my own personal opinion that for even just 1 incident of Domestic violence it should be enough to see the perpetrator charged and face the prospect of jail!
The problem is that the new legislation they wish to bring in here is deeply anti-male.
All abuse is wrong and over 50% of all IPV is against males, yet the new proposed legislation is named,
“Violence against women”.
Wake up and see that this feminist mindset will ultimately cause more heart ache than anything else.
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