The Court of Appeal has dismissed Ciaran Folan’s appeal against four convictions arising from his use of a driving licence and statements about his driving history. It was not persuaded that his trial was unsatisfactory or that the verdict was unsafe.
Folan was convicted after a six-day trial at Wexford Circuit Criminal Court on 23 October 2013. The charges concerned producing a driving licence to a detective inspector at Fethard-on-Sea in February 2009, and alleged false statements in documents connected with a Garda driving course and a transfer application. The court said he was then a serving member of An Garda Síochána. Fines totalling €3,000 were imposed after a later sentence hearing.
The appeal raised three main issues: whether a ruling in an earlier Galway Circuit Court trial prevented the prosecution from pursuing two of the charges; whether two further counts were properly added to the indictment; and whether those counts should have been tried separately.
The earlier trial concerned Folan’s brother, Brendan Folan, who had worked in Galway County Council’s driving licence section and was charged with offences including forging the licence. The forgery count was stopped at the close of the prosecution case because the judge considered the evidence then presented insufficient to send it to the jury. A jury later failed to agree on another count, and a retrial ended in acquittal.
The Court of Appeal rejected the argument that those outcomes established that the licence was authentic or barred the prosecution against Ciaran Folan. It said the ruling addressed the evidence presented in that trial at that stage and that Brendan Folan’s acquittal did not prevent the Wexford trial from proceeding.
The prosecution applied in July 2013 to add counts 3 and 4, an application the defence opposed. The appellant argued that the counts involved a different statute, a separate county and events distant in time from the Fethard-on-Sea incident. The appeal court held that the evidence supporting the proposed charges was in the book of evidence and that the charges could be joined: all four concerned a driving licence and alleged false claims about Folan’s driving history.
It also rejected the request for separate trials, citing links between the evidence for the four counts. The court dismissed the appeal. Its decision left the convictions and fines undisturbed.