Charges with Public Order offenses

[verron1]

I have been charged with two Public Order offenses (Section 6 and Section 4) that took place at a hospital a few days ago. I feel very remorseful and have tried to contact the specific nurse to apologise.

What are the chances of this leading to a conviction and/or imprisonment? I have no previous convictions but I do have a Garda caution but that was more than 7 years ago.

Nobody can possibly answer that without knowing both what you did and the circumstances, eg whether there were mitigating factors like you'd just received awful news Vs you were fed up with waiting in a&e and took it out on a passing nurse 🤷🏼‍♀️

It depends on what you did. Did you racially abuse someone for example?

I think I banged the desk and shouted at a nurse. They put me down and called the Gardai.

It was from them having confiscated the alcohol and saying they wouldn't return it.

I feel really ashamed in hindsight.

Do you know what you shouted? Were you threatening the nurse?

Tbh OP I don't think there's any point in sharing the specifics of the incident here. You need to speak to a solicitor where you can go through exactly what happened and they can advise re likely outcomes based on that.
Don't try to reach out to the hospital or nurse again, it's not appropriate now

What's done is done and there may be consequences, but I'd like to say well done verron1 for realising that you were out of order and for acknowledging that abusing medical staff is something they should never be subjected to. You haven't tried to minimise it and you understand how scary it was for the nurse to be shouted and and have someone banging the desk in front of her. Fair play for taking responsibility.

You mention alcohol - could it be that alcohol doesn't suit the decent sensible verron1 who knows it's completely wrong to shout at nurses and bang on desks, and now it has got you into this situation?

I've known two people who were the nicest people you could hope to meet - until alcohol got into their system, and they turned into something else, very confrontative with an undercurrent of threatened violence.
One of them got their drinking under control and never had any further problems.
The other didn't, he caused nothing but misery to all around him .... I know how much misery, because he was a relative of mine who broke his mother's and his wife's hearts before dying from the effects of alcohol.

I don't know what's going to happen with the public order offences, verron1, but this may be the opportunity to think about alcohol and that maybe it's getting you into trouble. It would stand you in good stead if the offenses get escalated, if you can show not just your genuine remorse, but an awareness of how you got into such a situation and a commitment not to let alcohol cause any more trouble in your life.

I hope it's OK to talk to you like this - you come across as someone who wouldn't behave unacceptably like that without the effects of alcohol and that's who I'm talking to.

Thanks.

Would it be possible to avoid the case being reported in the media?

Depends what else is going on in the courts the same day you are there