A former Cork secondary school principal has been jailed for three months after he was caught with child pornography on his home computer.
Tony Canniffe (62) had pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography at his home at Rosegarth, Donnybrook, Douglas, Cork on October 16th, 2008.
Today at Cork District Court, his barrister, Sinead Behan pleaded for leniency for Canniffe, pointing out that it was his first offence and had never been in trouble before.
She also pointed out that he had gone for 30 sessions of counselling a clinic in Scotland where he now lived and the probation service had deemed him at a low risk of re-offending.
However, Judge Con O'Leary said that Canniffe knew that what was doing in accessing child porn was wrong and unlawful and that terrible damage was being done to vulnerable children.
He said that Canniffe was an educated man who had a made a decision to take advantage of the fact that children were being quite brutally abused.
He sentenced Canniffe to 10 months in jail but suspended the last seven months on condition he comply with any directions given to him by his counsellor at the clinic in Scotland.
Judge O'Leary also ordered that Canniffe's name be placed on a register of sex offenders for a period of five years.
At a previous sitting, the court heard how Det Garda Martin Hogan of the Computer Crime Unit at Harcourt Square had found almost 300 child porn images on Canniffe's computer.
Investigators classify child pornography on a scale of one to five depending on how the children are dressed, positioned and what acts they are being forced to perform, he said.
Gardaí found some 289 images at level two involving girls aged four to 12 years and he found a further six files at level four involving young children aged between six and 12 years.