Man arrested as hoax bill runs into tens of thousands
Emergency services were scrambled on Thursday evening following a call that a man had been shot at Claycastle beach in Youghal, Co Cork.
An Irish Coastguard helicopter from Waterford was sent to the scene along with local coastguard units, the fire brigade, two ambulances, up to 30 gardaí, including the armed Regional Support Unit (RSU) and the Garda Air Support Unit from Dublin.
The emergency services abandoned their search due to bad light at 10pm on Thursday and resumed the search at 9am yesterday.
However, it wasn’t long before gardaí decided to call off the search in the belief that it was a hoax.
Garda inquiries quickly led to the arrest of a man in his 30s late yesterday afternoon.
He was taken to Youghal Garda station for questioning.
The man was detained under Section 12 of the Criminal Law Act (1976), which covers making a false report with intent to show an offence has been committed.
A Garda spokesman said it was too early to say how much the whole operation had cost, but added it was likely to run to tens of thousands of euro.
The spokesman said the man they had detained was living in the Youghal area.
It is expected that he would be released without charge by this morning.
However, the Garda spokesman said it was likely that a file would be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.
