THE COURT OF APPEAL
Appeal No: 159/11
Birmingham J.
Sheehan J.
Mahon J.
The Director of Public Prosecutions
Respondent
Appellant
Judgment (ex tempore) of the Court delivered by Mr. Justice Mahon on the 16th day of July 2015
1. On the last occasion an ex tempore judgment was given in which details of the background to this case were set out as were details in relation to the offences that were perpetrated by the appellant so I am not going to refer to them again, other than to state that the offences of this case were extremely serious.
2. The appellant, as the father of the victim, was in a position of trust and was a dominant family member. It is the case, of course, that the family house was clearly dysfunctional and problematical in many respects, but notwithstanding that, the offences were particularly grave.
3. The sentence imposed in the court below was fourteen years, with the final eighteen months suspended, in effect a net twelve and a half year term.
4. The court has considered the range of sentences that have been handed down in other cases of a broadly similar nature in terms of their seriousness. It is the court’s view that the appropriate sentence, based on the scale of sentences evident from these cases, is somewhere in the region of ten to eleven years. In this case the net sentence is twelve and a half years. So, in those circumstances the court takes the view that the sentencing judge ought to have suspended a greater portion of the fourteen years than he did, and it will therefore substitute, in place of the sentence already given, a sentence of fourteen years with the final three years suspended.
