The Director of Public Prosecutions has failed in his bid to have increased prison sentences imposed on two men who were jailed after gardaí discovered a major bomb-making operation near the Border.
One of the two men is being sued over the 1998 Omagh bombing.
The Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday rejected the DPP's appeal, claiming undue leniency in the imposition of a 10-year sentence on John Fee and a six-year sentence on Séamus McKenna.
McKenna is one of five men being sued by some of the relatives of the victims of the Omagh bomb in a £14 million law suit.
The Real IRA bomb attack claimed the lives of 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins and injured more than 300 others in August 1998.
The relatives' civil action is currently "on hold" before the courts in Belfast.
Fee (42), Blackstaff, Inniskeen, Co Monaghan and McKenna (51), Marian Park, Dundalk, Co Louth, were jailed by the non-jury Special Criminal Court in December 2004 for the possession of an explosive substance with intent to endanger life at Thornfield, Co Louth, on June 13th, 2003.
Fee had denied the charge and was convicted after a lengthy trial while McKenna had pleaded guilty to the charge.
The trial court heard that gardaí found McKenna and another man mixing home-made explosives at a remote farm in Co Louth and that 1,200 pounds of the explosive mixture had already been mixed and was in the final stages of completion for a massive bomb.
Fee was arrested after leaving the farmyard and gardaí found more explosives mixture in his van.
Counsel for the DPP, Brendan Grehan SC, argued before the three-judge appeal court yesterday that the trial court had failed to take into account the gravity of the offence, the potential of the explosives to cause injury and destruction, the motivation of those involved and the need for a deterrent sentence.
Mr Grehan said the quantity of explosives discovered by gardaí would have made the bomb one of the biggest ever made and the court had heard evidence that it would have caused damage for 500 metres from its centre if it had exploded.
Ms Justice Fidelma Macken, presiding, said the maximum sentence for the offences was life imprisonment, which showed the seriousness of the offences. The onus was on the Director of Public Prosecutions to prove there had been a departure from the normal appropriate sentences.
The judge said that the court was satisfied that in Fee's case a sentence of 10 years was one that took deterrence into account. The court was not satisfied that the DPP had discharged the burden on him to prove that either sentence was unduly lenient and it would refuse the director's appeal.