Tiarnan O'Mahoney and Bernard Daly have convictions quashed
This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.
The Court of Appeal overturned the convictions of Tiarnan O'Mahoney and Bernard Daly for conspiracy to defraud Revenue and falsify records. The proceedings were reported on 15 March 2016.
The previous July, Judge Patrick McCartan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court had jailed Daly for two years and O'Mahoney for three years. The men were first charged in November 2013.
Mr Justice George Birmingham heard the appeal with Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan and Mr Justice John Edwards. The substantive charges concerned a bank-account list supplied to Revenue that excluded an account which should have appeared. The court held that the reformulated charges exceeded the 10-year limit. Mr Justice Birmingham said prosecutors had changed them after discovering a complete defence to the original charge.
He also found a procedural error: the trial judge had decided whether documents were admissible before hearing oral evidence. Most of those documents were essential to the prosecution case.
For Daly, Mr Justice Birmingham said participation would have helped the alleged conspiracy, but it could have gone ahead without him. He described weak evidence and said the conspiracy charge should have been withdrawn from the jury. Daly would face no retrial and left court free on 15 March 2016.
O'Mahoney had additionally been convicted of conspiracy involving other accounts. He was released on bail. A retrial remained possible despite potential evidence-admissibility issues, with arguments on whether to retry him scheduled for 14 April.
Daly’s solicitor, Julie Burke, said he had consistently maintained his innocence since 2013.
The previous December, the Court of Appeal had reduced former assistant manager Aoife Maguire’s sentence for her role in the conspiracy from 18 months to nine months, finding the original term excessive. It suspended the remaining unserved portion and freed her. She had not challenged her conviction.