Two Co Cork men who took part in a firebomb attack at a house in Cork last year were given jail sentences yesterday at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin.
Anthony Crowley was jailed for 10 years and Alan Hickey for five years for the firebomb attack and for firearms and related offences committed earlier.
Prosecuting counsel Ms Una Ní Raifeartaigh told the court that the State would not be proceeding with a charge of membership of an illegal organisation against the two men.
The court was told that they were arrested as they sat in a car 10 miles from where a van loaded with six five-gallon drums of petrol "exploded in a fireball" after it was ignited outside a detached house at Littleisland.
Gardaí found two sets of clothing belonging to the men who carried out the firebomb attack, as well as four mobile phones and a bottle of petrol, in the car in which Crowley and Hickey were found.
Det Supt Tony Quilter told the court that Crowley and Hickey were both on bail at the time of the firebomb attack - Crowley on firearms charges and Hickey for withholding information from gardaí relating to the guns.
Crowley (22), single and an apprentice carpenter, of Stone View, Blarney, and Hickey (20), an apprentice plumber and father of one, of Ballygibbon, Blarney, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to damaging a van with the intention of endangering Mr Barry Sheehan's life at The Fairways, Littleisland, Cork, on March 23rd last year.
Last June Crowley pleaded guilty to the unlawful possession of an AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol, a sawn-off shotgun, 119 shotgun cartridges and 126 rounds of ammunition at his home on October 3rd, 2002.
Hickey pleaded guilty on the same occasion to withholding information from the gardaí between October 2nd and 4th, 2002.
Yesterday the court jailed Crowley for six years for the firearms and ammunition offences and four years for the criminal damage offence and ordered the four-year sentence to run consecutively because it was committed while Crowley was on bail for the firearms offences.
Hickey was jailed for one year for withholding information from the gardaí and for four years for the criminal damage offence and again the four-year sentence was ordered to run consecutively.
Supt Quilter said gardaí who searched Crowley's home in October 2002 found the AK-47 assault rifle, sawn-off shotgun, pistol and ammunition. They also found a poster with the words "Sniper At Work" and the words "Brits Out, 26 is not enough" in Crowley's bedroom.
Crowley admitted his responsibility for the guns and ammunition and said to gardaí: "I'll get 20 years for this."
Supt Quilter said gardaí carried out surveillance on a van parked in a car-park at a graveyard at Whitechurch in Cork in March 2004. Crowley was observed arriving at the van and on another occasion Hickey was observed putting two five-gallon drums into the van.