A 24-year-old father of two on his last day of a prison term yesterday was sent back to jail for a further 12 months and banned from driving for 20 years for a string of new offences.
Judge Desmond A Zaidan told John Ward that he would ban him from driving for life, but he had been advised that the Courts' Service computer system did not recognise the term "life" for driving offences.
Ward admitted a string of offences in Co Donegal between March 18th, 2006, and September 19th last. Ballyshannon District Court was told they included criminal damage when he smashed window panes with his fist in his wife Ellen's home, assaulting her, possessing a slash-hook with intent to cause injury to another relative, resisting arrest, and driving without insurance while already banned.
Ballyshannon District Court heard that Ward, a Traveller with an address at Letterbarrow, Mountcharles, had 65 previous convictions - more than half for driving offences - dating back to February, 2001.
Judge Zaidan recalled that he had sentenced Ward's mother, Anne to a long term in jail. He described her as "a habitual thief" who taught her children to steal.
He told Ward, the eldest of a family of 13 abandoned by their father, that he was being lenient with him because of a background in which he stood very little chance of advancing his own life.
Ward was sentenced to two years with 12 months of the sentence suspended. He was also fined €9,500 and banned from driving for 20 years.