‘We didn’t mean for you to stick it to him’

The reduction in the sentence for Paul Begley was welcomed far and wide.

Begley has come to be known as “the garlic man”, and his case has developed in some quarters over the last year as something of a cause célèbre. Yesterday, the Court of Criminal Appeal reduced his prison sentence for fraud from six years to two.

The case has been painful and worrying for his family, as any prison sentence would be for a man who has a young family, and had never, by the age of 46, previously come to the attention of the gardaí.