A used car dealer from Dublin who supplied a car used in a bomb attack on a PSNI officer in Belfast last year has been convicted of IRA membership.
Robert O'Leary from Clancy Road in Finglas sold a Skoda Octavia, which was used to plant a bomb under the PSNI officer's car in June 2019.
The 42-year-old denied that he had been involved and said he would "never, never, never " take part in an IRA operation.
He said he bought the car for €200 and sold it for €750 to a "stocky" man who walked in, paid cash and left his details on a piece of paper.
The Skoda Octavia that O'Leary sold was found burned out with another car in Belfast later that week in the early hours of 1 June 2019.
The Special Criminal Court found the car was 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.
He had not noticed the bomb during earlier checks and only discovered it later that day at the Shandon Park Golf Club in east Belfast.
The IRA later claimed responsibility for planting 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. We were unlucky this time but we only need to be lucky once".
Robert O'Leary told gardaí 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. He was, he said, "a bit of an Arthur Daly, I had birdies for sale a few years ago, I had a good name around Finglas".
He denied the charge of IRA membership but the Special Criminal Court found him guilty this afternoon.
It 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".
He will be sentenced on 5 October.
