The Court of Appeal has replaced suspended sentences imposed on former Kilnaleck National School principal Finbar Boyle with sentences of 15 months’ imprisonment on each count of theft and forgery. The court found the original sentences unduly lenient but said the new term should be lower than the two years it considered appropriate at the original sentencing, taking account of the delay and partial restitution.
The judgment, delivered by President Birmingham on 13 May 2019, concerned an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993. Boyle had pleaded guilty on a representative basis to five counts of theft and two of forgery from an indictment containing 23 counts. In March 2018, the Circuit Court imposed two years’ imprisonment on each count, suspended.
Evidence at the Circuit Court described offending between 2007 and 2012 that involved about €204,118. The Court of Appeal said the conduct included personal use of a school Visa card, improper cheques from school accounts, money taken from a Post Office account and false claims under the School Meals Scheme after the school had withdrawn from it. Forged documents supported some claims, and an additional bank account was opened to receive payments. The court said the case harmed both the public purse and the small rural school.
The sentencing judge had identified a headline sentence of three and a half years and reduced it to two years for mitigation. The DPP accepted that approach but argued that suspending the sentence in full was an error. The appeal court said a starting sentence of five or six years could have been justified, before taking account of mitigation, and concluded that custody was required given the seriousness, planning and breach of trust.
The court also considered Boyle’s early guilty plea, lack of previous convictions, good character and community work, alongside reports referring to traumatic events in his childhood. It said that, when the Circuit Court sentence was imposed, he was unemployed and had experienced serious personal difficulties. In deciding the sentence to substitute, the appeal court took account of the three-and-a-half-year interval since the original sentence hearing and €25,000 raised with help from family and friends as partial restitution.
The court quashed the Circuit Court sentences and substituted 15 months’ imprisonment for each count. The judgment does not state that the terms are concurrent or consecutive.