A WITNESS in the Tipperary murder trial rang complaining about ‘Missing’ posters that had been erected outside her home on the anniversary of Bobby Ryan’s disappearance.

Mary Lowry told the court she had found the posters “intimidating”.

Pat Quirke (50) of Breanshamore, Co Tipperary, who has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 52 year old Bobby Ryan, a DJ known as Mr Moonlight, on a date between June 3 2011 and April 2013.

Bernard Condon SC for the Defence put it to the witness Mary Lowry that Garda PULSE records showed that there were two occasions when she had spoken to the gardai complaining about the posters being erected on the road near her home and he asked if there had been other occasions.

“I don’t think so but I can’t remember,” Ms Lowry replied.

On one occasion, she had phoned the gardai to state that she had been “abused on the road” by Michelle Ryan, Bobby’s daughter, and gardaí noted that it appeared Michelle was putting up posters near her house. Michelle told them she would continue to put up posters in that area until her father was found.

Put to her that she had complained twice, Ms Lowry said yes, adding that she had found it very intimidating. “Every time I drove down the road I saw missing posters. It was like they were saying I had something to do about this man… missing.”

Mr Condon said she had complained to the gardai on June 3 2012 which he noted was the anniversary of Mr Ryan’s disappearance. “It was hardly surprising that on the one year anniversary that the family might want to jog people’s memories in the area,” he said.

It was hardly surprising that the family would want to put up posters, he continued, asking Ms Lowry if it had not struck her as being “astonishingly insensitive” of her.

Ms Lowry replied that she had no problem with the posters and that she herself had put up posters herself – but she said there had been a large amount of posters near her home and it was upsetting her children.

“If it upsets my children, I have to sort it. There must’ve been three or four posters up there,” she continued.

This was “very intimidating,” she said.

“I wanted to find Bobby Ryan as much as his family did but I felt intimidated and that’s the only reason I contacted gardaí,” she said.

Asked by Mr Condon why she had felt intimidated since he had gone missing from that property, she replied: “because it was my home and my sanctuary and it was the only peace I could have was in my own home.”

However when she left her house she saw “posters and posters” and she claimed her children were very upset by it.

“I had to protect them, that’s what I continued to do,” she said.

Asked why her children had felt intimidated, she said: “Because they were very fond of Bobby Ryan and this was a mystery.”

“It was like that I had something to do with Bobby…. it felt very intimidating,” she said.

Meanwhile Ms Lowry told the court that she had no recollection of having gone away for a weekend with Pat Quirke in the New Year of 2012.

Mr Condon put it to her that she had been at the Cliff House hotel in Ardmore, Co Waterford but Ms Lowry said she did not know where this place was.

The Prosecution had disclosed a statement from a staff member at the hotel who had revealed a twin room booking from the email address [email protected] for September 6 2011.

A receipt was put up on screen that was in the name of Pat Quirke, and details of Ms Lowry’s current account showing a transaction for Cliff House of €415.20.

Asked what she said about it, Ms Lowry said that Mr Quirke had a key for her house all this time and access to her computer.

“Are you suggesting Mr Quirke went on holidays to the Cliff House and somehow put it onto your current account?” asked Mr Condon.

“Well I don’t remember doing it… strange things have happened,” Ms Lowry said.

Put to her that she had been in the Cliff House in Ardmore, Ms Lowry again said she could not remember it.

He also put it to her that she had been in Fitzpatrick’s Hotel in Killiney, Co Dublin in February 2012.

Ms Lowry said she had been there but did not remember the dates.

Mr Condon asked if she could remember going to see a play in Dublin at the Olympia Theatre, called “The Night Joe Dolan’s Car Broke Down.”

Ms Lowry said she did not remember this, adding that it “mustn’t have been very good because I don’t remember it.”

Then Mr Condon conceded that this play was not something he had seen himself but thought that this was “a bit unfair to the actors.”

Ms Lowry told the court earlier that she went away with one trip with Mr Quirke around 2011 or 2012 but said she remembered very little about it.

“I got very drunk,” she said. “I was a bit scared and didn’t really want to be there. I went because I was under pressure of Pat Quirke trying to get back into my life again so I went for a quiet life and I remember very little about that night.”

She said she woke up that morning with a bad pain in her head. It “wasn’t anything like the affair we had,” she said, adding: “We hadn’t rekindled the relationship.”

The trial continues.

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