He knowly broke the law, should law breakers be punished?

Olga
Perhaps we need to review the deterrents against white collar crime. After all that’s what some of our Bankers were up to and you seem to think its not worthy of a long sentence!

Like the politicians and bankers of this country who pick pocket the people every day? Anything going to be done about that?

At least have the courage to show your I.D., or are you just a pathetic little troll?

If someone robbed €1.4 million from a bank would you still think 6 years was excessive?

It may be ‘only’ white collar crime, but that money was stolen from the taxpayer just as surely as a bank robber steals money from a bank.

Indeed Matoid, and two years is just punishment.
However we do have bigger fish to fry!

True enough!

@ Chair man . When you think of this man getting 6 years and the father of Fiona Doyle getting 3 years after raping her once a week for 10 years there is no comparison for the length of the sentence .
Nobody is suggesting he should not be punished but there needs to be some consistency in the level of sentences handed down !!!!!

White collar crime generally goes unpunished in Ireland. Criminal cartelists steal in excess of €4billion per year from small business and end consumers but despite being criminalised in 1996, no one has done a single day behind bars. Neither has Seanie Fitz or Michael Fingleton or indeed Patrick Neary for that matter.

Maybe the problem lies with the legal side of this issue. Yes he broke the the law, but is the tax difference not a bit excessive between two members of the same bulbous family to warrant a sentence of six years? A rapist gets six years for wrecking everything to do with their victims life…and the same custodial sentence is passed for somebody who mislabels veg…….

Totally agree with you Mary

Completely agree we have bigger fish to fry and there is no consistency in sentencing (Fiona Doyle’s father is a good example) however its not as simple as ‘mislabeling veg’, its a deliberate and systematic attempt to defraud the taxpayer of €1.4 million, for which a heavy sentence is fully warranted, as a deterrent if nothing else.

As I mentioned, if someone robbed a bank or an individual to the tune of €1.4 million people would not find a six year sentence particularly excessive, so why should this fraudster be treated any differently?

Its time white collar crime was treated just as seriously as any other type of crime.

Not if you have any connection with s bank

Anyone jailed yet for wrecking our country ?

Mattoid, the judge on sentencing was very reluctant to do so, but was obliged. My point is that maybe we have to look at the core in order to solve the problem.

I see your point Steve, but we can’t pick and choose which laws we wish to obey. He might not have agreed with the high tax on garlic but this was a large scale systematic fraud which hit the taxpayer for well over a million quid, and may well have also put his law-abiding competitors out of business.

As someone else on here said, until we cop on and start to treat this type of serious crime for what it is, corruption and fraud will never end in this country.

Where’s the disincentive to attempt large-scale fraud on the hard pressed taxpayer if the only risk is that if you get caught you have to pay it back??

Ah Lisa why give him 2 years just let him out now

There is a huge difference in walking into a bank ( possibly armed ) and stealing 1.4 million and evading the same in taxes. Both are crimes and both either directly or indirectly have victims but the criminal intention is very different. Allow me to put this into perspective with a better analogy.

A guy does a days work for 100 euro cash thus avoiding about 30 euro in tax. Another guy walks into a shop and holds up the cashier for the 30 euro in the till. Again there is victims but its the intent and is that person a danger to society at large. The tax evader is not a danger to any person the man that walks into a bank and steals in a threatening manner with little regard for harming people who get in his way, is a danger to people and needs to be locked up.

The white collar crime perp ie: failure to pay taxes , fines , fraud , corruption etc should be punished financially and also by giving his/her time back to the state through free work or community service. Putting him behind bars at a cost of 8,000 a month serves no purpose apart from revenge for the crime.

Putting people who are a danger to others ie: thieves , drug dealers, drink drivers, rapist, murders etc are a danger to the public and it serves a purpose to segregate them from society.

Is this not a case of the government robbing importers!?? Come on, paying more on tax than on what he’s importing!! Madness more than doubling the price before it even hits the shelf, and it’s a product that should be encouraged as part of a healthy diet… This fella has already paid back half his debt, it’s not that he was refusing to pay even!!
The real robbers of this state will never be brought to justice because the whole system is corrupt!

This whole case stinks and leaves a bad taste in the mouth…

The ludicrous import duty on garlic meant that the revenue were actually stealing from him..!!
He still paid duty, – but at a more sensible rate.
If this man should be in jail, then, there are thousands of politicians, bankers, & greedy pigs who should be in jail before him…

Completely agree there are hundreds of other corrupt banksters and corrupt politicians who should be in jail alongside him but that is not the point.

Another analogy would be someone who sets up an investment scam to defraud pensioners of their life savings. If he pocketed €1.4 million on the back of this would you still think a heavy sentence was unwarranted?

The only difference is that here the damage is spread between more victims (the taxpayer, the sick who need state medical services, elderly who’s care hours have been cut etc.), but he deliberately and illegally trousered the money just the same.

And don’t forget about his law-abiding competitors who may have been forced out of business or forced to make employees redundant as a result of this scam.

Are there questions that need to be asked about why duty on garlic is so high? Yes, but the government is not ‘stealing’ that money from the importer – it is certainly hitting the garlic eating consumer though.

There is certainly an argument that a very heavy fine along with a long period of community service may have been more beneficial to the taxpayer, but there has to be a large element of deterrent too – if someone else thought there was a chance of making over a million quid with the only risk being that IF you got caught there was a chance you’d have to pay it back and end up planting flowerbeds for a few months then of course other unscrupulous individuals will think its worth taking a chance!

I bet other Garlic importers around the country didn’t think it was unfair, Not if they were paying vat at the proper rate and then trying to compete with this fella

I dont think that people feel that this man should not be punished but the fact that he got 6yrs jail for a fraud of 1+million while there are individuals walking about who owe Billions (golden circle, maple ten etc) is what they see as excessive. If the golden circle and maple ten were serving sentences of say 20-30yrs this 6yr sentence would of looked reasonable to them in comparsion. Now when (unlikely) these other individuals come to court and get 10yrs (hopefully) they’ll be crying to the judge “but sure the garlic guy only got 2yrs why do i have to serve 10″. I would of preferred to see the big fish taken down first, given lengthy sentences and everyone else on a sliding scale after that. I’ll not hold my breath.

hahaha arb very good my man

Fair play to him, he’s a criminal, should he not be punished …if I pickpocket your wallet or steal your car …noone is hurt …so should I be released if I am caught? I don’t see the difference, a crime is a crime

You could commit, more serious crimes and get less for it! Our justice system, is a joke!

yes the system is flawed ….fix the system ….not pick and chose who should be released …..

exactly. thats where I was coming from with my original comment.

him sitting in prison costing the taxpayer tens of thousand of euro per year to house him makes no sense at all, if he’s out he’s working and earning and paying tax and paying back his tax bill and not costing the state a fortune to keep him locked up.. he tried to pull a fast one and he got sussed.. he didn’t like it off the grass though, politicians and their buddies have been scamming the ordinary people for years..

And providing lots of current and possible future employment….hit him in the wallet as putting him in jail serves no real purpose except revenge……but wait both he and the consumer have already been hit in the wallet by silly import duties on garlic

There is alot of over simplifing of the matter going on here. This guy obviously shouldn’t have evaded import duty however import duty placed on garlic shouldn’t be so ridiculously high; this guy has paid back some of the money and is in the process of trying to back the rest. He complied completely with the Gardai and has served an amount of time in prison at considerable cost to the tax payer – whats the purpose in keeping him in prison now, when it will only slow down the payment of his debt to society and cost money to keep him in prison – there is no purpose. The message that has committed a crime and been punished for it has been sent out loud and clear to those who are like him, those who admit what they did and try to make amends. The people who don’t care about what they did won’t to that bothered anyway.

It would have been far better to fine him and make him work to pay back more money then to imprison him; it would also be an idea to bar him from running for Dail Eireann, at least in the short term anyway.

If you want a like for like scenario the nearest one you’ll get is Mick Wallace; the on going imprisonment of this man seems more like revenge for the crimes of the many, those who aren’t making any effort to compensate society for the harm they’ve caused.

stealing 1.4 million is not a serious offence?

Its pittance compared to the price the damage of raping and abusing someone can do.

Chair man, could you repeat your point one more time please!
I didn’t get it the first 5 times

so all non-violent crime should be punished how?

plus 1

Non violent crimes should be punished by taking money off earnings or dole payments.

Non-violent crimes, that cost a Country billions. Should result in a serious jail sentence, but if he is repaying wht he owes and he is! He should have got a suspended sentence!

so if you get caught after stealing something, then agree to pay it back in instalments you escape a prison sentence, in your world stealing sounds like a better way to live that honest work

By community service.

I was going to make that point initially, but then it occurred to me that he has agreed to pay back x amount each year, but he didn’t get jail time which is what really bothered me ( not that I want to see wallace in jail at all ) because I don’t think jail time for small-scale fraud is just, when financially it costs the State more in the long run to do that. Financial penalties would benefit the State more and is still a punishment/deterrent.
Why aren’t the the big-boy fraudsters behind bars? Because they have mates in high places? The 6 year sentence handed to this guy sickened and angered me because I saw it as an attempt by the powers-that-be to scare the “little man” witless, while at the same time the country gets plundered and destroyed to the tune of billions and the real criminals sit back and laugh..

I hear you Jamie but wallace was high profile and should have been made an example of and the fact he was a public servant has to be taken nto account. we need to rid ourselves of the gombeen ill scratch your back mentality from top to bottom.

Wallace should be in prison . Wit him . One law for all not just for the few

Very good point, I totally agree

That’s a good point. May not be enough of a deterrent tho

And that’s exactly why this man was given 6 years ( because Seanie Fitz and his buddies have served none)

The duty on garlic from outside the EU is so high to protect French and Spanish garlic growers.

I can’t believe how many people are supporting this guy. Theft is theft and should be punished severely. No wonder we are in the state we are in.

Not so much that, more that the other lads got away with a light sentence (or no sentence).

No. It pays for things like hospitals and childrens allowannce

Porridge has many proven health benefits it shoyld be distributed free to all citizens. Just look at all the money the State would save by people not smoking.

no he was caught

Hmmm. Given what’s happened here in the past five years this man was victimised. No two ways about it.

He has been punished. 2 years in jail is a punishment!

Have you ever broken the law? The vast majority of people have.

So your saying that anarchy should be the way forward? Rules have to be out in place, some people will profit from them and most will not. But we still need them

Perhaps not breaking the law should be against the law and punished accordingly if the law was not really the law.

James — I see you’re racking up the red thumbs as usual.

‘ smoking cigars, drinking brandy, and of course, Lilt ‘…

A custodial sentence for defrauding the State out of €1.4 million is totally out of order. He was bold and the judge should have told him so and let that be the end of it.

You are a moral disgrace.

Health Care…..don’t get me started on that one!