A traffic warden who stole nearly €300,000 in coins from parking meters in Ennis was yesterday jailed for three years after the judge said he would give the man the benefit of the doubt when he claimed the money was spent and he had nothing stashed away.
At Ennis Circuit Court yesterday, Judge Carroll Moran said it was "extraordinary" that former Ennis Town Council traffic warden, Chris Harford (33), Cluain Ard, Kilmaley, Co Clare, could steal such a huge sum undetected.
The Mayor of Ennis, Mr Tommy Brennan, said yesterday that Ennis Town Council is not out of pocket as a result of Harford's crime.
Instead, it is Dunnes Stores, who owned the car-park in Ennis, that lost €300,000.
Mr Brennan said: "Dunnes Stores owned the car-park and paid the salary of a traffic warden to help manage it."
The procedure was that money would be collected twice a week from the meters at Dunnes Stores car-park by Ennis Town Council traffic wardens and the overall amount collected would be lodged to Dunnes Stores at the end of each month.
Mr Brennan said the council's internal procedures "have taken a step forward as a result and something like this won't happen again".
Harford was finally caught when on on September 30th, 2002, gardaí mounted a surveillance operation at Dunnes Stores car-park in Ennis where Harford was seen driving his 2001 registered Mercedes into the car-park and emptying the parking meters before later that day being spotted by gardaí making a coin lodgement in a bank in Ennis.
A subsequent Garda investigation found that Harford had lodged €292,204 in coins to two AIB accounts and one National Irish Bank account over three years.
Judge Moran said yesterday: "He cannot account for every penny and is quite emphatic that there is no stash.
"I don't know if it is true or not true, but the law obliges me to give him the benefit of the doubt."
Judge Moran said if Mr Harford had pleaded not guilty to the thefts which took place between August 1999 and September 2002 and was convicted by a jury, he would have sentenced him to five years.
The court had heard that when asked to account for the missing money, Harford said: "It was part of my compulsion, I had a spending problem."
He had frittered away the money on foreign holidays, weekends away around Ireland and spent €185,000 on trying to develop an ill-fated taxi business. He made various improvements to his home, including €5,000 on flowerbeds, €4,500 on his driveway and an undisclosed sum on a bed with a PC desk underneath. He spent €6,000 on mobile phones.