Arsonist avoids prison term over one-off ‘act of madness’

A Dublin man who set fire to at least two vacant buildings causing almost €400,000 worth of damage has been spared a jail sentence.

Joseph Cooney, aged 22, pleaded guilty to arson of a shed behind the Salmon Leap pub in Leixlip and a house on Main Street in the town in the early hours of November 25, 2012.

Judge Martin Nolan sentenced him to five years in prison at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, but suspended it in full after he accepted a garda’s view that the arson was a one-off “act of madness”.