One of the four men involved in an attempted bank robbery in Abbyleix in 2001, in which a garda was accidentally killed, has been jailed for eight years.
The planned bank raid was foiled when gardaí who had been waiting at the scene, following a week-long surveillance operation, moved in to intercept the gang's three stolen vehicles.
As one of the cars tried to get away, gardaí from the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) and National Surveillance Unit (NSU) opened fire. One of the bullets ricocheted off the ground and fatally wounded Detective Sergeant John Eiffe (40).
Garreth Quinn (27) of Maplewood Way, Tallaght, who absconded while on bail before his trial, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to conspiracy to rob the AIB Bank in Abbeyleix, and allowing himself to be carried in a stolen car on December 7th, 2001.
Quinn handed himself over to gardaí at the end of last August, almost a year after his fellow conspirators had been sentenced to 10 years each in November 2002.
Chief Superintendent Noel White, of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigations said the amount of money the gang could have got away with had the robbery gone ahead as planned would have been "in the millions".
Judge Michael White suspended the last two years of Quinn's sentence, binding him to keep the peace for two years on release and disqualified him from driving for 10 years.