Conman’s suspended jail time reactivated

A CONMAN who previously turned himself in to gardaí, shortly after phoning Joe Duffy’s RTÉ Liveline programme, was yesterday jailed for 21 months.

At Ennis Circuit Court, Judge Donagh McDonagh activated a 21-month suspended sentence of a two-year jail term he imposed on Frankie Shanley, aged 35, with addresses at Carrick on Shannon, Co Leitrim and Boyle, Co Roscommon in November 2008 over Shanley stealing a €22,000 sports car he took for a test drive from a garage.

Judge McDonagh jailed Shanley yesterday after his failure to engage with the Probation Service after his release from prison in 2009.

After a countrywide trawl by gardaí that lasted almost two years, Shanley was arrested on the side of a road in a stolen car on March 2 of this year.

A list of his previous convictions shows Shanley has appeared in courts across the country over a 13-year period stretching from 1998.

Judge McDonagh said “the number of counties across which Shanley has ranged is quite extraordinary”.

Detective Garda Larry Bergin said that Shanley has been convicted of a number of offences since receiving the sentence in Clonmel in 2008.

In court, Det Garda Bergin confirmed that on a previous occasion, Shanley handed himself into Manorhamilton Garda Station to admit to a number of crimes after he had phoned Joe Duffy’s Liveline show.

Shanley turned himself in in September 2006 and Mr Connolly said that Shanley handed himself in an attempt to clean the slate with the authorities “as he had so many irons in the fire that he needed to get matters dealt with once and for all”.

Mr Connolly said that a consultant psychiatrist has found that Shanley suffers from a psychotic mental illness known as Paranoid Delusional Disorder.

He added that the psychiatrist said that Shanley’s offences occurred during a timeframe when Shanley’s psychosis was untreated and they should be treated as singular as they stem from the one mental process.

Judge McDonagh said that “there is no ray of hope for me” that Shanley will comply with any Probation Service regime.

He said: “In those circumstances, the only option is to activate the sentence in full.”