It was a day for flood damage but none more punishing than that handed out to Liam Lawlor. Paul Cullen reports
So there was no third time lucky, and there's hardly even time for a trip to New York. Liam Lawlor's latest jail sentence is unprecedented for a sitting TD yet it was never less than inevitable.
From the moment Mr Justice Smyth entered the crowded courtroom and asked Mr Lawlor's barrister why the sentence should be deferred, it was obvious that the Dublin West TD was Mounjoy-bound.
Thereafter, it was only a matter of time; that is, how much time he would spend behind bars. Of the 10 weeks available, representing the balance of the suspended sentence imposed a year ago, the judge chose to impose four weeks.
This leaves Mr Lawlor in something of a quandary. On previous form, he is likely to appeal to the Supreme Court and damn the expense. However, this could expose him to an even longer sentence. In dismissing his last appeal in December 2001, the Supreme Court suggested he might have been imprisoned for even longer than the one week then imposed.
If the court was to find against him on this occasion, it could impose some or all of the six weeks remaining in the sentence.
As it stands, Mr Justice Smyth's punishment is short enough to allow Mr Lawlor to emerge from prison to run a campaign in the forthcoming election if he decides to do this. Assuming, that is, he can juggle his time with the requirement to file further documents to the Flood tribunal by April.
The judge was unimpressed by the quantity of documents submitted by the defendant, and even less so by the quality. He effectively accused Mr Lawlor of lying about his accounts in Liechtenstein, and quoted with disapproval one of his more casual responses in relation to the Coolamber lands.
"I believe he had been given every reasonable opportunity to put matters right but had chosen not to do what he was supposed to do when he was supposed to do it," said Mr Justice Smyth.
As on previous occasions, the judge studded his presentation with quotations from some great writers. He reminded the TD, sitting impassively at the back of the courtroom, that he was not exempt from the law and urged him to reflect on Dryden's lines from Absalom and Achitophel: "For lawful power is still superior found/When long driven back, at length it stands the ground."
He pointed him to the politician's bible, Machiavelli's The Prince. "A wise prince ought to observe some such rules, and never in peaceful times stand idle, but increase his resources with industry in such a way that they may be available to him in adversity, so that if fortune changes it may find him prepared to resist her blows."
Dr Johnson also raised his head as the judge recalled that the defendant had more than a year to provide documents of a "Byzantine complexity".
"There is no transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse."
If Mr Lawlor felt he was being lectured, he didn't show it but held his tongue as he departed for talks with his law