Galway Bay fm newsroom – A Connemara builder has been sentenced to seven years in prison, with the final three years suspended, for an assault on traditional Irish musician, Noel Hill.
The incident happened in a pub toilet on St Stephen’s night seven years ago, and has left the victim with lifelong injuries.
Imposing sentence at Galway Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Rory McCabe said this had been a horrible, nasty and vicious attack.
55 year old Michael Folan from Teach Mór, Lettermullen had initially pleaded not guilty to intentionally or recklessly causing serious harm to 57 year old Noel Hill, at Tí Padraig Mairtín Beag in Leitir Mór, on St Stephen’s Day, 2008.
He changed his plea to guilty on the second day of the trial after Noel Hill gave harrowing evidence of the injuries he sustained on the night to a stunned jury.
Plastic surgeon, Patrick McCann had told the jury that Noel Hill’s left eye socket had been pushed back into his skull and he had replaced the damaged bone under the socket with titanium mesh in 2009.
Sergeant Ronan Mahon told the sentence hearing in February that Noel Hill had been in the pub that night with his partner and was attacked from behind when he went to the toilet.
The court heard that a dispute over payment for renovations Folan had carried out for the victim was the reason for the assault and that the matter had been in the hands of their solicitors at the time.
Judge McCabe said the seven-year sentence stood, but due to the efforts the accused had made to rehabilitate and given his personal family circumstances, he said he would suspend the final three years of the sentence for ten years.
The judge noted that with remission, the accused would serve three years of the sentence but that on his release, it would not end there.
He said Folan would serve the period of the suspended sentence if he transgressed on his release for ten years after that.
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