The sentencing of a 43-year-old man who admitted applying for a false passport, later used by crime group leader Daniel Kinahan, has been delayed after he failed to attend court today.
A bench warrant was issued for the arrest of Seamus Walsh, from Mountainview Crescent in Dundalk who admitted being paid €2,000 for the passport in December 2011.
Mr Walsh was due to be sentenced this morning at Dundalk Circuit Criminal Court but his barrister told the court he had sent a message to his solicitor last night to say he could not attend because of a family funeral.
The court was told Mr Walsh could not be contacted by phone to verify this information.
Judge Dara Hayes issued a bench warrant asking gardaí to execute it "with discretion" if Mr Walsh was in fact at a funeral. However, he said Mr Walsh should have given more information to his solicitors about his inability to attend court this morning.
At a sentence hearing earlier this year the court was told that Mr Walsh admitted applying for a false passport using his name, but with a different picture. The passport was later used by crime group leader Daniel Kinahan .
Seamus Wash told gardaí he was approached by a man he did not know in December 2011 about a passport application .
Daniel Kinahan had the use of the passport for six years before it was cancelled.
Walsh was addicted to heroin at the time and said he did not know who his passport was going to.
At the previous hearing, Detective Garda Phelim McKenna of the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation said their investigation began on foot of a complaint from the Passport Office.
It was noticed that the passport photo did not match the photo on the defendant's Public Services Card.
Instead, it matched another passport application for Daniel Joseph Kinahan.
The passport in Seamus Walsh's name was revoked in October 2017.
Three documents submitted with the passport application were false including an electricity bill, which should have been in Mr Walsh's mother's name, had an account number which did not match the address; the bank account number did not match and the driving licence submitted had a driver number that did not exist.
Det Garda McKenna said Mr Kinahan is a senior figure in organised crime and it was common in these cases that vulnerable people with drug or alcohol addictions were approached for passports.
Walsh told gardaí that when the passport arrived at his house in Dundalk, he handed it over to the man whom he described as being a member of the Travelling community who had been "in and out of his house selling drugs" at the time .
Walsh said he was off his head on drugs at the time and did not know who the man got the passport for.
Defence barrister Ronan O'Carroll said Walsh had been off heroin for the past seven years and was the sole carer for his mother, who is ill and in a wheelchair.
Judge Dara Hayes said acquiring a passport in this manner can only be for a criminal purpose, irrespective of what criminal it was for and was a serious offence.
He adjourned the case requesting urinalysis tests as proof that Walsh was off drugs and adjourned sentencing until today, warning him that a custodial sentence was a very real possibility.
Today, the judge said a probation report indicated the defendant's mother had been in a nursing home since last August.
