The Court of Appeal has dismissed Eoin Hannan’s appeal against the severity of a four-year sentence for harassment, finding no error of principle in the sentences imposed by the sentencing judge.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Woulfe on 30 July 2024, concerned offences against Ciara Hassett and her father, Paddy Hassett. Hannan had been convicted by a jury of one harassment offence and later pleaded guilty to two further counts. The later offences were committed while he was on bail for the earlier case.
The court described a persistent course of unwanted contact beginning in 2016. After Garda warnings, Hannan sent letters to Ms Hassett’s home and workplace, and visited her workplace twice in August 2020. The court said the contact upset and frightened her. While on bail with a condition not to contact her, he wrote to and telephoned her father seeking her number. Further contact continued, including a letter in December 2021.
At sentencing, the judge imposed three years for the first Bill. For the two counts on the second Bill, she imposed concurrent terms, reduced to one year each after applying the totality principle, to run consecutively. The effective sentence was four years.
Hannan argued on appeal that the offences were non-violent, that a psychiatric report contained a damaging falsehood about a past barring order, and that the sentencing judge had not properly accounted for his bipolar disorder. The prosecution accepted that the offending involved no physical violence but argued that it was serious and had significantly affected the victims.
The Court of Appeal said the conduct formed a serious and persistent pattern of harassment with significant impact. It found the four-year headline sentence for the first Bill fell within the available range, and that the later offences committed while on bail could be treated as a significant aggravating factor. It also concluded that the sentencing judge had expressly considered Hannan’s psychiatric report and treated his mental health difficulties as mitigation.
On the disputed barring-order reference in the report, the appeal court said there was no indication that the sentencing judge relied on it, either as an aggravating factor or otherwise. The court therefore rejected that ground and dismissed the appeal. The sentences remain in place.