David Drumm’s bail conditions maintained

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm has lost a bid to relax his bail conditions, with a judge ruling it is “not unreasonable” that he should sign on at a garda station every day.

Mr Drumm appeared before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday where his solicitor applied to reduce his signing-on conditions to once a week instead of once daily.

Mr Drumm, aged 49, with an address in Skerries, Co Dublin, has been charged with 33 counts under two separate bills concerning alleged offences committed at the now defunct bank. He has yet to enter a plea to the charges. He is facing two trials. The first has been set down for April next year and the second is due to take place in January, 2018.

The court heard Mr Drumm is required to sign on daily at Balbriggan Garda station as part of his bail conditions. His solicitor, Aoife Corridan, told the court this takes about an hour every day, which she said was a “significant burden”. Ms Corridan requested that Mr Drumm instead be allowed to sign on once a week.

Prosecution barrister Sinead McGrath, BL, said Mr Drumm’s signing-on conditions had already been relaxed from twice daily to once daily after his last court appearance in April. She noted the court previously heard submissions that he posed a “serious flight risk”.

“We feel there is a continuous pushing of boundaries in relation to this. The signing-on conditions are not unduly onerous,” Ms McGrath said

Judge Martin Nolan said it was unlikely Mr Drumm could leave the State without somebody noticing. “Mr Drumm is one of the best known Irishmen in this State,” he said. However, he said gardaí requirements that Mr Drumm sign on daily were “not unreasonable at this particular time and in this particular case” and he denied the application.

Mr Drumm is facing two charges of conspiring to defraud depositors and investors at Anglo by “dishonestly” creating the impression that deposits in 2008 were €7.2bn larger than they were. He faces one extra charge over the EU transparency directive.

He will stand trial for those offences on April 24, 2017. The case is expected to take 12 weeks. Mr Drumm also faces 16 counts of offering unlawful financial assistance to members of businessman Sean Quinn’s family and 10 other individuals as well as 14 charges of falsifying documents.

These charges will be dealt with at a trial set down for January 12, 2018. That trial is expected to last about two months.