A 51-year-old businessman who pleaded guilty to causing an obstruction by climbing on top of an oil tanker at Whitegate Refinery in Co Cork during the fuel protests has received a two-month suspended prison sentence and a \u20ac1,500 fine.<\/p>\n
Midleton District Court heard that Ivor Sweeney spent one hour and 15 minutes on top of a tanker on April 10 this year.<\/p>\n
Defence solicitor Wayne O\u2019Sullivan said that Sweeney, of Coolbawn Lodge, Ballick Road, Midleton, was remorseful for his actions.<\/p>\n
Sweeney pleaded guilty to an offence on April 10 at Main Street, Whitegate, where he allowed a mechanically propelled vehicle to remain in place for such a period as to cause, or be likely to cause, an obstruction to traffic.<\/p>\n
The offence was contrary to Section 98 of the Road Traffic Act 1961 and Section 102 of the Road Traffic Act 1961, as amended by the Road Traffic Act 2006.<\/p>\n
Court presenter Sgt Majella O\u2019Sullivan said Garda\u00ed were in attendance at a blockade of Whitegate Refinery on April 10.<\/p>\n
Sgt O\u2019Sullivan said that two trained Garda negotiators were called in to deal with the situation.<\/p>\n
She said Sweeney climbed on top of the tanker in order to cause a traffic obstruction.<\/p>\n
She said he failed to alight from the vehicle and described the offence as being at the \u201cmost serious end of the scale\u201d.<\/p>\n
The sergeant said it was an \u201cextraordinary emergency event\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Sweeney, who has no previous convictions, was arrested at 5.05pm on April 10.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Sullivan said his client was at the protest with his \u201cneighbours, friends and colleagues\u201d and that there were \u201chundreds\u201d of people in attendance.<\/p>\n
Judge Colm Roberts said the protest started as \u201cpeople venting concerns\u201d and then \u201cturned into something else\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judge Roberts said Sweeney failed to comply with directions given by An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na.<\/p>\n
He said it was difficult to understand how a man in his 50s with no previous convictions could go from being a \u201cpeaceful protestor to a criminal offender\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said he was not going down the line of \u201cminimising\u201d what had occurred.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Sullivan said his client wanted to thank Garda\u00ed for their kindness after he developed hypothermia from being on top of the tanker for more than an hour.<\/p>\n
He appealed for leniency and said his client travelled internationally for his IT work.<\/p>\n
He added that his client was \u201cwilling to do anything to put things right\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ivor Sweeney told the court he went to Whitegate to exercise his right to democratic protest.<\/p>\n
He said he was there solely as a citizen and decided to climb on top of the tanker because \u201cnegotiations had broken down with the Government in Dublin\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said he felt \u201cthreatened\u201d when the Public Order Unit arrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t think violence being put on us was necessary. I didn\u2019t want my friends and neighbours injured.\u201d Judge Roberts said that, given nobody stopped Sweeney from leaving, he could not categorise himself as being threatened.<\/p>\n
Mr Sweeney replied that it \u201clooked inevitable\u201d that there was going to be violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to stop that and put an end to the confrontation,\u201d The Judge asked Sweeney if he had any concept of private property and he acknowledged that he had.<\/p>\n
Mr Sweeney said that, in hindsight, his actions were a mistake.<\/p>\n
The judge said Sweeney was a rational adult who knew the consequences of his actions.<\/p>\n
Judge Roberts said Sweeney could have shown a \u201cgood example\u201d and demonstrated \u201cleadership\u201d on the day by leaving the protest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think that that he (Sweeney) is remorseful to some extent. He is aware of the consequences now.\u201d Judge Roberts imposed a two-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, and fined Mr Sweeney \u20ac1,500.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 51-year-old businessman who pleaded guilty to causing an obstruction by climbing on top of an oil tanker…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2246,79,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-494580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-cork-court","tag-cork-news","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}