A 51-YEAR-OLD Englishman was yesterday sentenced to two years in jail for possessing 220 live rounds of ammunition found in his house by gardaí after they received reports that partially burnt Northern sterling notes were found near his home.
Don Blaney of Cnoc Abhainn, Old Church Road, Passage West, 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 trial at Cork Circuit Criminal Court last November.
Insp Mary King told Blaney’s sentencing hearing yesterday that the ammunition was found in a lunchbox in an attic room when gardaí searched Blayney’s house after receiving reports that two partially burned Northern sterling notes were found in a neighbour’s garden.
During the trial Sgt Peter Quinn told the court that when he asked Blaney 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 testified during the trial: “I know Don definitely did not put them [the ammunition] there.”
Yesterday, in the course of pleading for mitigation for his client and pointing out that his client had no previous convictions, defence counsel Tom Creed said that George Hegarty was no longer welcome at Blaney’s house.
Blaney’s brother John Gerard Blaney, deputy headmaster of St Mary’s Catholic primary school in Birmingham, said his brother who came to Ireland in 1990 was concerned with humanitarian causes, abhorred violence and was involved in Amnesty International.
John Gerard Blaney said the family had relatives in the RUC and that his brother would certainly not raise arms against Ireland and he described the conviction of his brother for having ammunition as totally wrong and unjust. Don Blaney’s daughter, Siobhán Blaney, said, “I have been blessed my entire life to have him, I am proud beyond words that I was raised by this man, he is someone I wish I could emulate more. I cannot accept my dad was involved in anything subversive.”
Imposing sentence, Judge Cornelius Murphy noted that Blaney had been convicted by a jury after a trial and he had no doubt but that a custodial sentence had to be imposed, observing that the type of ammunition exacerbated the offence.
He noted that the maximum sentence was 10 years but given all the mitigating factors including the absence of any previous conviction, his age, his co-operation with the probation service, his low risk of reoffending, he sentenced him to two years in jail.