A 43-year-old man who used a stolen digger to smash an ATM machine containing over €124,000 out of a bank wall has been received a seven and a half year sentence.
Sentencing Bernard Quigley, with an address at Branchfield, Drumfin, Co Sligo, Judge Francis Comerford suspended the last two years of the sentence.
He also backdated it to August 15th, 2014 when the accused was taken into custody in connection with the theft at the Bank of Ireland, Teeling Street, Tubbercurry.
Imposing sentence at Sligo Circuit Court, Judge Comerford said ripping out an ATM machine from a bank wall had been “an affront and an attack on the sanctity of an Irish town”.
He pointed out the damage to the bank and the cost of replacing the ATM safe had been over €40,000, which was a direct loss to the bank .
The judge said that while all the cash in the ATM had been recovered by gardaí, his was no credit to Quigley, but was thanks to the members of the public who alerted gardaí and to the “speediness and efficiency of the Garda response”.
The judge said that while it was a very serious offence, he was taking into account the fact that there was no violence and no firearms used in the theft.
It was “a less serious offence than someone going into a bank with a gun or a weapon” and threatening staff, he added.
But the judge told the accused, a separated father of six children, that anyone involved in such a crime was aware of the risk that members of the public could get caught up in it, as happened in this case.
Detective Sgt Tom Colsh, who agreed with defence counsel Aan Toal that the accused man was a "happy-go-lucky guy", said gardaí had traced him through a Done Deal advertisement for a low-loader used in the raid.
Judge Comerford sentenced him to two concurrent sentences of seven and a half years with two suspended for the theft of the ATM safe and for causing criminal damage to the bank wall and ATM housing.
The defendant was sentenced to four years for being in possession of a stolen digger, and of causing criminal damage to a wall and ATM housing at Teeling Street, Tubbercurry on the same date.
