A 51-year-old Englishman was today sentenced to two years in jail for possessing 220 live rounds of ammunition found in his house by gardaí after they received reports of that partially burnt Northern sterling notes were found near his home.
Don Blaney of Cnoc Abhainn, Old Church Road, Passage West in Cork had denied a charge of possessing 220 rounds of assault rifle ammunition at his home on February 18th 2005 but was convicted following a five day long trial at Cork Circuit Criminal Court last November.
Insp Mary King told Blayney's sentencing hearing today that the ammunition was found in a lunchbox in an attic room when gardaí searched Blayney's house after receiving reports that two partially burnt Northern sterling notes were found in a neighbour's garden.
During the trial Sgt Peter Quinn told the court that when he asked Blayney about the discovery, he replied: "I have absolutely no idea what that is. I do not honestly know where they came from. I swear I don't know. I have never seen them before."
Blaney later told the trial that he rejected with every fibre of his being having any knowledge of how they got there. "I cannot speculate on who may have put them there, I am not prepared to go into a guessing game, I really do not know," he said.
The trial also heard evidence from Sinn Féin member and republican, George Hegarty who said he called to Blaney's home on an almost daily basis for years and he testified during the trial, "I know Don definitely did not put them (the ammunition) there."
In the course of pleading for mitigation for his client and pointing out that his client had no previous convictions, defence counsel Tom Creed SC said that George Hegarty was no longer welcome at Blaney's house.
Imposing sentence, Judge Murphy noted that Blayney had been convicted by a jury after a trial and he had no doubt but that a custodial sentence had to imposed, observing that the type of ammunition exacerbated the offence.
He noted that the maximum sentence was ten years but given all the mitigating factors including the absence of any previous conviction, his age, his cooperation with the probation service, his low risk of re-offending, he sentenced him to two years in jail.
