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A MAN WHO took part in an attempt to extort €25,000 from a “completely blameless” family has been jailed for 18 months.
Dylan Cronin (20) and another man went to the family’s home at night, claimed one of the children was involved in drugs that had gone missing and demanded the family give them €25,000.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that this claim was entirely false and had been concocted in order to attempt to gain the money. The blackmailers returned on two further occasions, during which property was damaged and notes were left demanding the money.
Cronin, with an address at Grange Abbey Crescent, Donaghmede, Dublin, pleaded guilty to three counts of demanding money with menace at an address in Malahide, Co Dublin, on 5, 8 and 11 September 2020. He has no previous convictions.
Passing sentence, Judge Patricia Ryan said this put an “enormous stress” on the family, not to mention fear. She said the offences occurred at night time at a person’s home, were planned and “veiled threats” were made.
Judge Ryan said that while Cronin has said he was coerced, he was to receive €2,000 or €3,000 for being involved in this offending behaviour. She said he allowed himself to be involved and allowed his car to be used.
“It did not happen once, it did not happen twice, it happened three times,” she said.
The judge said that given the serious nature of the charge, it deserved a custodial sentence. She said the court was taking “a very serious attitude” to this offending behaviour.
Judge Ryan sentenced Cronin to three years imprisonment, but suspended the final 18 months of the sentence on strict conditions, including that he follow all directions of the Probation Service for 18 months post release.
During the sentencing hearing, Garda Joseph Robinson told Kieran Kelly BL, prosecuting, that on the first date in question, Cronin and another man came to the home of the family with their faces covered by scarves.
Garda Robinson said the other man spoke to the couple living there and told them that one of their children was involved in €50,000 of drugs going missing, along with three other people.
The other man told the couple that the other three families had agreed to pay €25,000 and that their child had a debt of the remaining €25,000. He said they did not want to threaten the family, but that they would have to pay this.
The men were told that the family did not have the money and they left. The court heard it is accepted that the child in question had no involvement whatsoever with drugs and this was a story concocted by the men to try to get money.
Garda Robinson said that on the second date in question, the man who had been threatened got up in the morning to find the window of his car was broken. He found a handwritten note in his porch area which featured a phone number and said to ring it when he had the money.
Three days later he found another note left on the windscreen of his car. This note said that there was “no way out” of this and it was “only going to get worse”.
The man had installed CCTV cameras at his house and gardaí were able to identify the accused man’s car as the number plate was not concealed.
In interview with gardaí, Cronin said he was persuaded by someone into getting involved and that his life and the lives of his family were in danger if he did not do it. He said he was to be paid two or three thousand euro.
Cronin told gardaí he accepted he was one of the two men who spoke to the family on the first occasion. He said he drove to the house on both subsequent occasions, but did not get out of his car.
Additional evidence
Garda Robinson agreed with Deirdre Flannery BL, defending, that her client was not someone who had come to the prior attention of gardaí.
The garda agreed with counsel that her client was not the “mastermind” behind the offending. He agreed her client told gardaí he was pressured and in fear.
He agreed that Cronin and his family have since been threatened by men who called to the door of their family home and that investigations are ongoing into the matter.
Flannery said her client was aged 18 at the time of the offences and had found himself associating with “a different crowd” following the death of his uncle.
Counsel said a “hare-brained scheme” was concocted with these new friends to “extort” money from the family, who were “completely blameless”. She said her client does not associate any longer with the others who were involved in the offending.
She said her client is working, living with his parents and has a girlfriend who has been a “supportive and stabilising influence”. She said her client had €1,000 in compensation in court which could be made available to the family.
Kelly told the court that the family have been canvassed regarding these funds and that they would prefer the money to go to Pieta House.
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What is never mentioned in the media is that Michael Martin and his party bankrupted this country with no growth for 10 years. Had to beg for money from the IMF. All because of their housing policy, etc I haven’t forgotten has any one else ?
@Jimmy Donovan: FG would have done exactly the same if they had been in government.
Their 2007 election manifesto was similar to FF except they also promised to scrap the introduction of eircodes
@Thomas Sheridan: They also wanted to reduce stamp duty which would’ve put more money in developers pockets. Same party different name
@Eddie Garvey: The dogs in the streets know FFG are one party. By calling it two, they get twice the jollies!
@Jimmy Donovan: I haven’t forgotten about Sf screaming across the dail that every type of spending should be increased because ‘the country is awash with money’…..we would have been in a way worse situation if that lot have have been in…..I haven’t forgotten about that any one else?
@John Paul: SF hasn’t spent one cent of government money in this country. Each man, woman, and child currently ows 43k per person. Interest on this is 14 million euros per day.
@Jimmy Donovan: have a read of this article from 2001 by Greg Palast. The interview & verified documents are from Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank.
If people think FF or FG or any other political party, in Ireland, have been running Ireland for the last 67-70 years, they’re sadly mistaken.
@Mr Inbetween: maybe read the linked article before stating “facts”
Ireland has not been an independent country since joining the EEC
@Jimmy Donovan: Public Sector greed also had a lot to do with the Government going bust back in the day.
@John Paul: must look for your comment on the childrens hospital article.
What I would love to know is how such a huge gap between housing required and actual supply has been allowed to develop
We now have a census every 5 years & we have known since the 1990s that the population is going up.
Back in simpler times it would have somebody’s job to ensure enough housing was being built
Now we are tripping over ourselves with experts and reports, but nobody puts their hand up on such a fundamental issue.
And is if that’s not enough we learn that E 1 billion a year is now being spent on accommodation for asylum seekers
This is not a formula for a happy contented country
@Gerry Kelly: the gap is there because it is a controlled market, and those influencing control are interested in making the biggest profit possible from each unit (developers) aided by incompetent govt and govt who are completely competent but rigging the whole thing for their benefit (they or their close allies are in the property game)
@Eddie Garvey: 100% exactly what I’ve been saying for years. The public are being hoodwinked by a combination of the banks/government/media and developers for the last 10 years approx. The shortages of ‘to buy’ and more recently ‘to rent’ is by design and will end in disaster for Joe soaps nationwide
@Gerry Kelly: Building stopped completely in 2008 but the population kept growing.
@Mick Duvanny: and they conveniently forgot to do their job of constructing social housing since ?
Over 1 billion spent on asylum seekers last year.
More than half of new PPS numbers in Ireland were issued to people from outside the EU last year.
Non nationals account for 36% of those in long term Job Seekers Allowance. 90% rise from 2019.
Highest number of working visas for Australia issued to young Irish people in 2023 since the height of the crash in 2009. Never mind all the Irish going to work in Canada, UK, Dubai etc.
We are a small country on the western edge of Europe. We cannot take all these people whilst our own leave. This is population replacement before our very eyes.
6 murders in 6 weeks all involving foreign nationals.
Ireland doesn’t have a housing problem. Ireland has an immigration problem
@JagTune: Exactly right
@JagTune: very well said. Be ready to be called all sorts of names including racist just because you point the reality.
@Mr “JonnieBoy” Johnson: Do you really care if the race-baiters call you names?
@Housing Hunger Games: this is the same public that voted in Martin and Harris on a first count ,I wouldn’t put alot of stock in the brain power of the Irish voting public at the minute.
Fact is we have a massive problem,these people are not like the polish who all appeared at the start of the boom,they have no intention of working in factories or building sites,massive dole merchants and feck all else
Brown field sites could be brought into use overnight if the political will was there, we saw during covid how quickly things can be done with emergency legislation.
Didn’t they say that the last time and the time before that and the time before that.
all fine and well but will Lowry approve
@Gerry Ryan: depends on if he can sell a discounted property to his kids through a shelf company. Sorry, that was some Lowrey guy, I get confused sometimes
@Gerry Ryan: Depends if he has an interest in it, like the LIDL that was built during Covid when not one house was allowed to be built.
After engorging themselves with salary increases.
What about easing the co.councils ban on mobile a nd chalet type homes in large gardens in country? Remember the man Tipperary Council took to court for housing himself in one…on his own land He is not the only one. Recently the same to man who housed his relations in Limerick. Many could house a son or daughter in their instead of them paying huge rents,miles away from elderly parents
@Helena Camella Cummins: There is no land in this country that the state doesn’t own, read the constitution and he didn’t bother getting plannjng permission, the part that a lot like to forget. I mean that is the first thing to do before building anything.
Housing for all is nonsense. No country can house 8 billion people
So we’ll have a 5k fine with near zero enforcement. Given the money to be made in short term lets, this will just be seen as a cost/liability and ignored
This is just the same meaningless talking in circles around the issue of housing as always, while actually doing nothing to solve it.
The brass neck of these absolute muppets and the contempt that they show to the people of Ireland beggers belief. They now say that they need time to draft a plan to deal with the housing crisis and a response to it????
They are acting like they didn’t just spend 4 years in government supposedly addressing the exact same housing crisis????
But now they say that have to start from square one, and the people of Ireland are going to just swallow this rubbish all over again?
Nobody likes the idea of lazy people that don’t want to work ever, getting low cost social housing while milking the system, but we are beyond that as a nation.
Because families in which both people are working full-time cannot afford a place to live, those people need access to social housing now, but its not only them, young people are facing the prospect of being homeless or under threat of homelessness regardless of how hard they work to build a future for themselves, older people on pensions are also struggling to pay for accommodation, is this what we want our government to deliver to the people of the country, more excuses, grand plans that deliver nothing and meaningless soundbites?
There is only one answer to the housing crisis, building social housing now on a massive scale.
Same course of action that crashed the economy as that’s there only plan. Protect their business lobbyists friends that roll up every year that control the land banks
I would recommend more tax breaks for the buyers and keep tax breaks for the developers. What would I know, I’m not on a TDs salary and live in the real world.
“Housing for all plan”…heard that years ago…yaaaaaaaaawn.
Yet again our so called Government and opposition are so full of sh**.
Keep it simple – no short term letting without Planning Permission . Enforce it correctly with huge fines for owner and operators like Air B&B and Booking.com. – this means the sector will settle down and inflated prices all round will be more controlled!
FG is
FG
Stop talking and DO something radical, that does NOT mean cancel the RPZs, bring in much tighter controls so that our own citizens can afford to live properly.
have your say