A SCHOOL treasurer and “pillar of the community” who stole more than €200,000 from a primary school to “gain kudos with fellow parishioners” has been given a five-year suspended sentence.
Betty Barry (54) used the money to make large donations to her local church, the Girl Guides and other community groups in Ringsend, Dublin. She paid for flowers for the funerals of many local residents, for pilgrimages to Lourdes, the ordination celebrations for a new priest and for holidays and cruises for her family and friends.
Barry, of Whelan House, Ringsend, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 16 sample charges of theft from Saint Patrick’s National School, Ringsend, and one of forgery, between August 12th, 2006 and May 18th, 2010. She has no previous convictions.
The court heard Barry had unsupervised, sole access to the school’s bank accounts during her term as treasurer on the board of management, from 1997 to 2010.
She started using the school’s cheque book in 2006, as she had no cheque book of her own, initially to pay her own household bills and with the intention of lodging the cash at a later stage.
Her defence counsel, Seán Guerin, told Judge Martin Nolan when Barry realised she could use the cheque book without detection, her use of it “snowballed”.
Garda Brian Hunt told Melanie Greally, prosecuting, there were a total of 284 unauthorised transactions on the school account, including both lodgements and withdrawals, over four years.
Among the outlays identified, he said, were €15,000 on flowers for funerals of deceased members of the community, €35,000 for the local church and parish, and €25,000 to the local Girl Guides.
Garda Hunt said Barry was an audit assistant for a firm of accountants and used some of the funds to pay collector general fines incurred by clients of that firm which arose after Barry was late in filing documentation.
Garda Hunt said although just more than €200,000 had been withdrawn from the account illicitly, Barry had lodged €100,000 back in, so the loss to the school was €101,000.
Judge Nolan said Barry suffered from a human failing, “an ambition to be a person of importance”. He said she had stolen the money in the hope of “giving her some kudos with fellow parishioners”, but said the sad thing was she did not realise she had a great reputation in the community already.
Judge Nolan accepted Barry was “a very good person with an impeccable record” who had succumbed to temptation.
He sentenced her to five years in prison which he suspended in full on condition she pay the school €25,000, keep the peace and be of good behaviour for five years.
Mr Guerin said his client had received €35,000 on leaving the accountancy firm she had worked at for 36 years. She presented this in court as a token of her remorse.