"He'll be picking up his free bus pass by the time he gets out," the garda outside the courtroom said, laughing. His colleague mimicked an old man wobbling on a stick.
Jubilation only begins to describe the feelings of more than two dozen gardai who gathered to watch the white-faced 58-year-old man called Dutchy being sentenced yesterday.
After 24 minutes of deliberation the three judges sentenced Patrick Eugene Holland to 20 years for possession of cannabis for sale or supply. Nearly all eyes were on the small man in the anorak standing between two burly gardai.
Most of the detectives dressed in jackets and ties allowed themselves satisfied smiles when the word "twenty" left Justice Richard Johnson's lips.
Veronica Guerin's brother Jimmy, who had sat until this moment with his arms tightly folded, slapped his knees, grinned broadly and said a silent "yes".
"Everybody, including ourselves didn't think the guards would get the result that they got," he said afterwards.
Holland carried his brown paper bag full of folders and documents into the dock, as usual.
More agitated than he had appeared on the last seven days of the hearing, he sat forward several times during submissions from barristers, scratched his beard and clasped his small hands tightly.
He summoned his solicitor, Jim Orange, from across the courtroom for an animated consultation, as Sgt Padraig Kennedy described Holland as a "very loyal and close confidant of the gang leader" in the drug-smuggling operation.
Sgt Kennedy described the man in the dock as the son of "decent respectable people" who had been "well-reared".
Identified in court as the man gardai believe shot Veronica Guerin with specially-doctored bullets as she sat in her car on the Naas Road, he has become public enemy No 1.
"The public perception of my client goes beyond what this court is being asked to deal with," his barrister, Mr Brendan Grogan, said.
A short while later Holland was driven under Garda escort to Portlaoise Prison.
