“You’ll see me back here when I’m out,” a persistent offender told Judge Neilan after he sentenced him to 22 months imprisonment despite his pleas that he had never been given a chance to come good.
He broke into a number of rooms at the Greville Arms Hotel over two nights in 2007 and 2008 and stole items.
Douglas Byrne entered the hotel during New Year’s Eve festivities in 2007 and gained entry to two guest bedrooms. He took car keys from both. When he discovered that one of the cars was blocked in, he left the keys on the windscreen.
However he stole the second car which was later discovered in Finglas.
Garda Adrian Regan said “The locks wouldn’t have been the best” at the time in the hotel and no damage was caused. The two women whose keys were stolen were at a New Year’s Eve party.
Mr Byrne, who has an address at 106 Greenfort Crescent, Clondalkin in Dublin returned to the same hotel on April 17 and took jewellery valued at €1,000 from another room. It was not recovered.
Ten days later he entered the Monastery pub at Clonard in Meath and stole €321 cash from a handbag left on the counter by a barmaid at the pub.
Mr Byrne, who has 70 previous convictions was described as a chronic heroin user who had been receiving treatment.
Garda Regan agreed with Ms Patricia Cronin that her client looked a lot better since he had last seen him. Ms Cronin told the court that a judge at Cloverhill had given Mr Byrne the opportunity to take a place on a treatment course through the Probation Service and she hoped Judge Neilan would allow that to continue.
However on the basis that Mr Byrne “returned to the same place and returned in the same vein” to commit his offences, the judge insisted on imposing a prison sentence, saying that €1,000 jewellery had gone to feed drug barons.
When Mr Byrne called out that he’d never been given a chance, the judge accused him of crying crocodile tears and had Garda Regan read out the list of previous convictions and sanctions imposed.
The judge described him as a serial offender. “Every time he went to prison he was released,” he said and commented each time Garda Regan referred to Mr Byrne getting the Probation Act.
Mr Byrne knew nothing about the circumstances of the woman from whom he’d stolen €321 – she could have needed the money to pay her ESB bill. He noted that Mr Byrne had brought no compensation.
When the judge said he’d been given a litany of opportunities since his first offence in 1987, Mr Byrne said “I got jail, is all I got. Just prison, prison the whole time. I just asked for a chance”.
Imposing the sentence, the judge ignored Mr Byrne’s comment that “You’ll see me back again when I’m out,” and noted that defendant had shown “no concern, remorse, or contriteness”.
