Out-Of-Work Actor Pleads Guilty To Shop Lifting

An actor has pleaded guilty to stealing groceries saying that he did it because telling his three children that there was no bread and milk “was a step too far”.

57-year-old Joe Purcell of Donomore Park in Tallaght, Dublin, said a mix-up with children’s allowances meant the payment was stopped for a short time last August.

“That’s why we were left with no money and nothing in the fridge,” Purcell told The Irish Times yesterday.

“For myself I can deal with it, but for the three kids it was different. I couldn’t let them ask for a glass of milk in the morning and not get any,” he said.

The actor, his wife and three children, aged nine, 12 and 16, are living on social welfare payments and the small earnings from on and off acting work .

He did decorating work on his return from the UK five years ago but this dried up. Acting work included a part in Pygmalion at the Abbey Theatre last year.

Last Thursday he pleaded guilty at Tallaght District Court to stealing €58 worth of groceries from two shops in Firhouse last August. Judge Anthony Halpin ordered him to complete 100 hours of community service.

Judge Halpin told the court that middle-class people unable to buy food for their children was a new type of poor that had emerged from the recession.

(H)