A convicted rapist has been remanded in custody for sentencing after he pleaded guilty to drug dealing offences before the Limerick Circuit Criminal Court.
Thomas O’Neill, (35), of Lenihan Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, Limerick, appeared before the court to affirm guilty pleas to six offences under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
O’Neill admitted two counts of possessing heroin for sale or supply on June 6th and June 12th last.
O’Neill also pleaded guilty to one count of possessing cocaine for sale or supply on June 6th, 2024.
The defendant admitted two counts of simple possession of heroin on June 6th and June 12th, and one count of simple possession of cocaine on June 12th last.
O’Neill was in possession of the drugs at Hyde Avenue, Limerick, the court heard.
O’Neill’s barrister, Liam Carroll, said he was “not seeking any (probation/psychological) reports” and “that it becomes a sentencing matter at this stage”.
Judge Colin Daly remanded O’Neill, who is being held in custody at the Midlands Prison, for sentencing on Monday, November 18th.
O’Neill was one of four teenagers who gang-raped a woman at Cratloe Woods, Co Clare, on January 23rd, 2004.
O’Neill, along with Dean Barry and Darragh Ryan, who were all 16, and Jason Ring, who was 14, carried out the savage sexual attack.
The four were armed with a golf club, a screwdriver, a shovel and a wheel brace.
They threatened the woman and a male she was in company with at the time.
O’Neill and his accomplices ordered the woman and man out of their car. The woman was struck with a golf club after she refused to give one of the gang a kiss.
The man was ordered into the boot of the car and the woman was pushed onto the bonnet before she was dragged inside the car where O’Neill and the other three took turns raping her.
The gang threatened to burn the car with the man inside it, and while they were raping the woman, they opened the boot of the car and assaulted the man a number of times by striking him with a golf club.
Superintendent John Kerin, now retired, gave evidence at the gang’s sentencing hearing in July 2004, that the couple’s ordeal lasted for around an hour, and it only ended when the man escaped from the boot of the car and flagged down a passing motorist.
The gang pleaded guilty to raping the woman, who was in her 30s; they also pleaded guilty to falsely imprisoning the man, and they admitted assault causing harm to the couple.
Between them, the four were jailed for a total of 31 years.
O’Neill was described by sentencing judge Paul Carney, as the gang’s “ringleader” and the “director of operations” and jailed him for ten years.
Dean Barry, Garryglass Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, was jailed for nine years; Darragh Ryan, Lenihan Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, was jailed for eight years, and Ring, of Crecora Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, was sentenced to four years.
Thomas O’Neill, who has other convictions including for violent disorder, is married to April Collins, a former girlfriend of convicted violent criminal Ger Dundon. Ms Collins was previously being given round the clock protection after she appeared as a key State witness in a trial that helped Gardai dismantle the notorious Dundon McCarthy crime network.
Dean Barry was found dead after taking his own life in his cell at Limerick Prison on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012.
He had been in custody on remand at the prison on a charge of setting fire to his family home with his mother and girlfriend inside the property.
Barry left a note saying goodbye to his family and apologising for his past crimes.
In 2005, a fifth member of the gang, Stephen Barry, Roxboro Road, Limerick, then aged 25, pleaded guilty to four charges arising out of the rape and was jailed for 21 years with the final year suspended.
