Shandon Park: Dublin man who supplied police bomb attack car jailed

Police at Shandon Park Golf Club in June 2019

A Dublin man who supplied a car used in a bomb attack on a police officer in Belfast has been jailed for three years.

Robert O'Leary, 42, from Clancy Road in Finglas, sold a Skoda Octavia which was used in a plot to plant a bomb under the PSNI officer's car in June 2019.

The device was discovered at Shandon Park Golf Club in east Belfast.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt told the court that it was solely good fortune that no harm was done.

In a letter read out in the Special Criminal Court in Dublin, O'Leary promised that he would not associate with people involved in "militant or violent republicanism" when released from prison.

He had claimed he bought the car for €200 (£179) and sold it for €750 (£670) to a "stocky" man who walked in, paid cash and left his details on a piece of paper.

The Skoda Octavia which he sold was found burned out with another car in Belfast later that week, in the early hours of 1 June 2019.

Police and Army bomb disposal experts attended the scene in east Belfast

The car had been used to survey the area around the PSNI officer's home in Belfast and stopped nearby for three minutes while the device was planted under his car.

The police officer had not noticed the bomb during earlier checks that morning and only discovered it later at Shandon Park Golf Club.

The IRA subsequently said it planted the improvised explosive device.

In a statement, it said it was "confident that the device would have exploded if not for the terrain it travelled over".

O'Leary told gardaí (Irish police) they were "barking up the wrong tree" and "never in a million years" would he source a car for use in an IRA operation.

He insisted that all he did was sell a car without a log book.

However, the Special Criminal Court found he had "put forward an implausible and false narrative" and had acquired the car for a customer for a specific purpose.

It also found that O'Leary "invented the purchaser - some mysterious man - to break the link between him and the car" and convicted him of IRA membership.

In sentencing him on Friday, Mr Justice Tony Hunt said that even though the court was satisfied he was not a "higher up" IRA member, the car he supplied was "a pivotal element" in the attempt to murder a police officer in Northern Ireland.

He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison but the final six months were suspended because of the commitment he made in the letter, which he affirmed in the dock on Friday.