The High Court has refused an application by Dean O’Mahony to quash orders that remanded him in custody and revoked part of a suspended prison sentence. Mr Justice White held that the application was unmeritorious, despite extending time to hear it.
The challenge concerned a Clonmel District Court order of 17 November 2015 and a Clonmel Circuit Court order of 3 December 2015. The first remanded O’Mahony to the Circuit Court under section 99(9) of the Criminal Justice Act 2006. The second revoked the suspension of a six-year sentence imposed in 2014 and required him to serve four years, with the final two years suspended on conditions.
The sentence followed guilty pleas to drug offences across several indictments. A further indictment concerned handling stolen property. The original sentence was suspended from 22 July 2014, subject to conditions including keeping the peace, engaging with addiction services and probation supervision. The judgment said he also undertook to pay €1,000 a year to a drug treatment centre and to train young people in kickboxing.
In 2015, O’Mahony indicated he would plead guilty to stealing a sports jersey from a Clonmel shop. The District Court remanded him to the Circuit Court after it became aware that his earlier suspended sentence remained in force. At the revocation hearing, the court heard evidence about the theft and considered a probation report. The sentencing judge cited non-compliance with probation requirements and failure to make the promised payment, as well as the new offence, when imposing four years in custody.
O’Mahony argued that the courts lacked jurisdiction to remand him or revoke the suspension under sections 99(9) and (10). Those provisions had been declared unconstitutional in Moore v Ireland in 2016. He said his appeal against revocation was still pending and that he was entitled to relief as a matter of right. The Director of Public Prosecutions opposed the application, relying on delay and earlier decisions, including Clarke v Governor of Mountjoy Prison.
White J extended time to hear the judicial review but refused the requested relief. He followed the approach in Clarke that each case had to be considered on its own facts and that the Moore ruling did not automatically reopen earlier cases. The judge found finality had been reached when the original sentence was imposed in November 2014, after O’Mahony’s guilty pleas, and said he did not fall within the circumstances addressed in Moore because he had pleaded guilty to the trigger offence and had not appealed that conviction.
The judge said it was for the Court of Appeal to decide its own jurisdiction over O’Mahony’s appeal against revocation and sentence severity. That appeal could address the revocation decision but could not overturn the original conviction. The High Court’s decision refused the judicial review relief; it did not determine the Court of Appeal’s jurisdiction.