A drug addict who committed a spate of armed robberies within weeks of early release from a 10-year sentence has been jailed for a further eight years by Judge Desmond Hogan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Colm Clarke's crimes included stabbing a jeweller and robbing €43,000 from a Jury's Inn hotel.
A second man, Stephen Ledden, was jailed for four years after he admitted being an accomplice of Clarke in some of the offences.
Both were involved in the armed robbery of €43,000 from the Jury's Inn Hotel on Custom's House Quay, and threatened staff at gunpoint in the Strand House Inn on North Strand Road.
They escaped in a stolen car and when they were forced to stop following a chase with gardaí, Clarke held a sawn-off shotgun at the front windscreen of a patrol car but did not fire.
Clarke also stabbed the owner of Duggan's Jewellers in Fairview, Mr Damien Duggan, when he and another man entered the premises armed with a gun and knife.
Clarke was detained by two passers-by after he ran from the shop being pursued by Mr Duggan, whose injury was superficial.
Ledden also escaped with €600 after he robbed an off-licence in Marino at gunpoint last April.
Clarke (37), Sheriff Street, Dublin 1, and Ledden (24), Upper Oriel Street, Dublin, admitted the series of offences, which took place between March and June 2002. Clarke has 39 previous convictions and Ledden has 33.
Judge Hogan suspended the last 12 months of each sentence because of the early guilty pleas and the co-operation they gave to gardaí, but he described their acts as "very, very serious offences" and warranted custodial sentences.