Father of five jailed for 10 months for driving without insurance

A MOTORIST has been jailed for 10 months after repeatedly driving without insurance in “blatant disregard of the law”.

Father of five Gerard Reilly already had 11 previous convictions for having no insurance and was under a disqualification when gardai caught him driving in west Dublin.

Judge John King sentenced him and banned him from driving for another 10 years when he appeared in Blanchardstown District Court.

Reilly, a 38-year-old painter-decorator with an address at Drumfinn Road, Ballyfermot, pleaded guilty to driving without a licence or insurance at Snugborough Road on December 12, 2020.

Garda Colm Fox said in evidence he stopped Reilly at 1.28pm and established he was disqualified from driving.

Reilly was arrested and charged. The court heard he had eight prior convictions for driving without a licence and 11 for having no insurance.

He had been given custodial sentences in the past and had been handed down disqualifications of up to 12 years.

Defence barrister Ciaran MacLoughlin said Reilly had his own business and employed three people.

He was driving a work van on the day he was stopped – ordinarily, one of his employees would be driving but this worker was called away unexpectedly, Mr MacLoughlin said.

Reilly had a job on and “made a foolish mistake,” he said.

The accused had cooperated with the gardai, but Mr MacLoughlin said Reilly had an appalling record and he had advised his client that he was “at grave risk”.

The accused had issues with drugs previously but was clean and sober now, Mr MacLoughlin said.

He had been in business for four years and was fully tax-compliant, he added. The barrister asked Judge King to consider suspending any sentence.

The judge replied that he “couldn’t possibly” do this given the scale of the previous offending.

He said it had to be the worst he had seen in his career on the bench so far and there was a “blatant defiance of court orders, and a blatant disregard of the law”.

Reilly was a recidivist who had not learned his lesson, he said, and this was why the sentence was not longer.

He set recognisances in the event of an appeal.