This article is from page 6 of the 2006-02-14 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 6 JPG
THOUSANDS of fake driving licences are in circulation on the roads, a Clare court has heard.
The issue of the counterfeit licences came to light after a driver sporting a fake document was stopped at a routine checkpoint.
The judge in an Ennis court handed down a four-month prison sentence to the man in question.
Sergeant Dermot O’Connor told the Ennis District Court that he stopped Trevor Condon (38) of Goirtroe, Corrandulla, in Galway at Newmarket-on-Fergus on July 12 last.
“When I asked for his licence, he produced a document which appeared to be a full driving licence but when I checked it, in my opinion, it was a forgery,” Sgt O’Connor said.
“When I informed him of this, he challenged me and said that he had been issued the licence by Galway Corporation,” the Sergeant told Judge Aeneas McCarthy.
The Shannon-based officer seized the document and sent it to the handwriting section at Garda Headquarters, Dublin, for examination.
Sgt O’Connor said that the experts there “advised that it was a forgery and one of a batch of a few thousand which are in circulation, mainly in the Southern part of the country,” Sgt O’Connor said.
He described the forgery as being “of average quality,” and handed it over to the Judge for inspection.
The court heard that the accused man had a number of previous convictions, but none for road traffic offences.
His solicitor, Bill Loughnane, said that the Galway man’s previous offences had all been when he was a young man and he had not been in any trouble for a considerable time.
“He is on disability payments and has numerous problems. He was offered the opportunity to purchase one of these licences and he foolishly accepted,” Mr Loughnane said.
After asking to see the licence, Judge McCarthy handed the convicted man a four-month jail sentence for possession of a forged document. But he suspended the jail term, provided the driver entered into a bond to be of good behaviour for 12 months. Judge McCarthy also fined Condon €150 for having no driving licence.