Greystones Businessman Convicted For ‘Vile’ Campaign Against Druids Glen Manager

Niall Barry at Bray District Court. Pic: Darragh McCann

ou know it’s quite a serious case when it makes both The Irish Times and The Irish Independent…

Greystones businessman Niall Barry has found himself in the news, and in court, this week as he received his sentence for what the judge described as a ‘sustained, persistent and vile’ online campaign over almost 8 years against Druids Glen Golf Club manager, Marcus Doyle.

According to Tim O’Brien in The Irish Times, the court heard of Barry writing to hundreds of golf clubs across Ireland making baseless allegations against Doyle, which subsequently impacted upon the latter’s professional and personal life as well as his mental health.

The court was told that Barry had a grievance over the governance of Druids Glen and later with Golf Ireland (then the Golf Union Of Ireland), when they rejected his complaint against the club.

At Bray District Court, the 73-year-old Hillside resident had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of sending harmful communications contrary to Section 4 of the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, better known as Coco’s Law.

Writing in The Bray People, fearless court reporter Darragh McCann revealed that counsel for the prosecution, James Kelly, outlined the case, Marcus Doyle getting into conflict with Niall Barry when the latter accused the club of “not complying with rules from the Golf Union Of Ireland“. When the GUI didn’t uphold his complaint, Barry was removed from the Druids Glen membership, prompting a campaign of sending messages to Mr Doyle via Twitter, email and various other social media platforms.

Writing to almost every golf club in the country, Mr Barry stated that ‘Druids Glen threw me out, Mr Doyle showed a lack of integrity‘, and that he felt wronged by his ex-solicitors, ‘due to the old boys club‘.

Also revealed in court was the fact that Mr Barry used social media to denigrate Mr Doyle to any possible employers.

Testifying, Garda Derek Kelly of Newtown stated that the harassment occurred between 2019 and 2025, with Barry often referring to Mr Doyle in his tweets as ‘the Weasel Doyle’ or ‘the weasel’, whilst also accusing him of being ‘a liar and untrustworthy’.

In his victim impact statement, Mr Doyle pointed out that this campaign against him had been carried out despite his having no involvement in the decision to terminate Mr Barry’s membership at Druids Glen.

He also pointed out that the harassment over almost 8 years had had a devastating impact on his mental health, and led to the breakdown of his relationship with his partner.

Doyle described Niall Barry’s actions against him as “not a lapse of judgement” but rather “a campaign of cruelty“.

Defence counsel Michael Bowman told the court that Mr Barry is a successful businessman with grown-up children, and is now subject to a fall from grace in terms of his standing in the community, to which Judge Sinéad Ní Chúlacháin countered, “His standing in the community was not taken away, it was thrown away“.

The judge also found that the offence fell within the highest range of seriousness for this type of offending and therefore set a headline sentence of 24 months imprisonment.

It was Mr Barry’s guilty plea, and his payment of €25,000 to Mr Doyle as a token of remorse, that had that sentence reduced to 18 months, suspended in its entirety for five years.

Conditions for the sentencing included Mr Barry having no contact with Mr Doyle for 10 years, and that all social media posts concerning him should be deleted.

Judge Ní Chúlacháin concluded, “I can’t imagine a more vile campaign than this…”.