The Court of Appeal has increased the custodial term for Michael McGauley after finding that Monaghan Circuit Criminal Court wrongly made all sentences concurrent for a series of theft and deception offences involving multiple victims.
In a judgment delivered on 7 February 2022, the court allowed a Director of Public Prosecutions application to review the sentences for undue leniency. It quashed the Monaghan sentences and resentenced McGauley. The appeal concerned sentences imposed on five bills of indictment; the Court of Appeal said only the Monaghan sentences were before it.
The offences spanned 2016 to 2018. They included deception involving a claimed investment in liquidation electrical goods, bogus offers of gardening equipment and Apple products, insulation deposits that were not passed on to the company, and online ticket sales. The judgment said the charged amounts on one bill alone totalled €116,000, and that evidence suggested the sums involved might have been greater. Victim impact statements described serious financial and personal consequences.
The sentencing judge had imposed concurrent terms, backdated to 21 January 2020. The Court of Appeal held that treating the offending as a single global course and making every sentence concurrent failed to account adequately for the separate offences and victims. It said the appropriate overall punishment had to reflect the multiple transactions while applying the principle of totality.
For three deception counts on bill MNDP0017/2018, the appeal court imposed two years’ imprisonment on each count. For eight deception counts on bill MNDP0030/2019, it imposed three years and nine months on each, with the final nine months suspended. The court directed those terms to run consecutively in the structure it set out, producing five years to be served in custody. The first term was backdated to 21 January 2020.
The court also imposed three years on each of five deception counts on bill MNDP0030/2018, three years on each of five theft counts on bill MNDP0029/2019, and 18 months on the two theft counts on bill MNDP0039/2019. Those terms were directed to run from 21 January 2020 and concurrently with one another. All sentences imposed in the appeal were also directed to run concurrently with those imposed at Naas Circuit Court. The appeal court noted that this meant no prison time would be served solely for the Monaghan sentences, apart from a short remand period.
The Court of Appeal stressed that its sentencing structure did not diminish the punishment appropriate for each separate transaction or overlook the different victims. Its orders addressed the Monaghan sentences only; the Naas sentences were not under appeal.