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A PROLIFIC SHOPLIFTER with nearly 200 convictions was caught with a stolen mountain bike after a garda spotted him walking down the road with the bike still locked to a piece of railing.
Thomas O’Driscoll, aged 35, with an address in Gloucester Diamond Park, Dublin, was arrested after the garda saw him carrying the bike, which was still attached to the piece of railing, along a city centre street.
O’Driscoll, a drug addict with 193 convictions, immediately admitted it was stolen property, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard yesterday.
He pleaded guilty to one count of possessing the stolen mountain bike on 4 August last year.
He also pleaded guilty to one count of stealing €1,300 worth of clothing from Urban Outfitters in Dublin on 25 July last year, one count of possessing a stolen ladies coat on 2 August last year and one count of trespassing and theft at a holiday apartment letting office in Temple Bar on 31 August last year.
Sentence
He was jailed for two-and-a-half years yesterday.
Handing down the sentence, Judge Martin Nolan noted O’Driscoll was a prolific shoplifter with a “huge record of conviction”.
“It seems Mr O’Driscoll can’t stop himself from stealing,” the judge said. He backdated the sentence to last September when O’Driscoll went into custody.
Garda Carl Bolger told Maurice Coffey BL, prosecuting, that O’Driscoll was seen on CCTV footage making off with a quantity of clothes.
Just over a week later, he was spotted by a garda acting suspiciously on the street. Gardaí questioned him and discovered the coat worth €125 stolen from Marks and Spencer.
O’Driscoll was on bail for that matter when he was stopped on the street with the stolen mountain bike in tow. No owner of the bike was ever identified.
Later that month, O’Driscoll walked into Key Collection in Temple Bar, a holiday property letting office, and walked out with a suitcase.
His previous convictions include theft, criminal damage, burglary and misuse of drugs.
Derek Cooney BL, defending, said his client had a troubled history and carried out the offences to fund his “chaotic and chronic drug lifestyle”.
The court heard O’Driscoll’s father was stabbed to death in front of him when he was 11 years old. O’Driscoll left school shortly afterwards as a result, he did not sit any state exams and has literacy issues.
He started using drugs at the age of 11 and was jailed as a young teenager, which resulted in him becoming addicted to crack cocaine, Mr Cooney said.
He was shot in the back in a pub a number of years ago and lost a kidney. He also has a hole in his spine.
He has a history of self-harm and has attempted to take his own life, the court heard.
He has had two stints in rehab but has failed to get clean, the court heard. He is now undertaking a methadone programme in custody.
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I’m so impatient. All that scrolling to find the answer
I just jumped straight to the comments… What was the verdict?
@George Weener: I am lost,so the supermarkets pay Repak for the collection of packaging “Amongst other initiatives, this funding pays for the nationwide kerbside collection of household green bins for recyclable materials,” Well, clearly one of us is being swindled out of our money as the householder is also paying for the collection of our green bins, would Repak care to comment………..didn’t think so, paid in full….twice.
@Vonny: ive a mad idea, lads. Howabout we unite on this one thing…just one thing for now. This problem would be solved in a day if we were united on just this one thing. Everyone leaves their plastic at their store… then we’d see the real power of unity. Divided we fall? We fell so long ago, all we know now is being walked on…
In the Netherlands every supermarket has a skip In the car park for packaging,
Legal requirement,
We should follow suit.
@Niall Power: great idea but what do you do about the ones who’ll dump their household rubbish it aswell ?
@Niall Power: What does this achieve? It just saves you transporting it home. The packaging was still manufactured all the same.
If supermarkets have things in packaging so unnecessary that consumers are stripping it off in the car park, the issue is not to provide them with a skip, it’s to stop packaging that way.
Providing a skip is arguably worse, because it’s a tacit acknowledgement by the supermarkets that the packaging may be excessive, but then deciding to keep it with a handy place to throw it away.
@Gerard: supermarkets will get fed up with needing to have waste collected more often and pushing manufacturers and suppliers to offer products with less packaging is the idea I think
@Darcy: report them for fly tipping and hand over your CCTV footage to the authorities to help them in their investigation?
@Karen Wellington: of course it’s that easy ..ever see the lengths people go to when doing something illegal ?
@Darcy: not to mention that it’s not illegal to put your rubbish in a bin provided for customer use.
@Niall Power: less plastic = no need for skip in the car park.
@Darren Mulligan: supermarkets are paid for there collected, plastic and cardboard waste.
@Dave O’Keeffe: it is. There’s a law that can get you fined if you put something in a bin for public use if it’s suspected that it should have gone in your domestic bin. You throw nappies in a bin provide for excess packaging and you’ll be done for illegal dumping
@Darren Byrne: maybe a bin on public property but not outside a shop or on a forecourt. Here’s how I know, some time ago I was working at a petrol station and I noticed someone leave a big bag next to the bin. Went out had, had a look, it was about 10kg of raw chicken. Got on to a litter warden that I’ve known for years and also got on to the council, same answer for both. It’s not illegal.
@Niall Power: dont see how that solves anything .. out of mind out of sight,
this whole article is about an initiative of someone or some group highlighting an issue to supermarkets .. not solving anything .. nor providing a solution either – just highlighting an issue, and not all that well in my opinion
leaving the plastic in the supermarket .. its sitll plastic its still going to waste its still being consumed, .any them buying it and leaving it is the same as them buying it and taking it with them, the same facilities to recycle it (if any of it can be recycled exist whether they do it or the supermarkets do it.
There is only one effective way to cut plastic waste in supermarkets, and that is to not buy the products that have it .. pick the option that doesn’t have it .. or go to a shop/market that doesn’t have the packaging ..practically impossible for most
@Darren Mulligan: or just charge you more for it and carry on regardless
One of the most advanced steps in environmental issues
Start stripping the plastic wrapping off cucumbers that HAS a skin
@Quentin Moriarty: The plastic keeps it fresh for longer. I do agree that plastic packaging is unnecessary most of the time.
@Quentin Moriarty: Bananas !!!!
@Lily Martin: actually it doesnt keep t fresh for longer , cucumber skins need to breath – wrapping them in plastic prevents that and makes them ‘sweat ‘ – the ‘sweating ‘ causes damp which in turn causes mould , cucumbers last just a long without plastic wrapping as they do with – keeping them in a fridge also deteriorates them quicker ,they should be ket in a cool dry place with good air circulation – a veg rack or similar storage is more suitable .. there is no proven reason to wrap ANY fruit or vegetable in plastic other than to make it easier for supermarkets to store . same goes for pulses . legumes ,brassica’s , root veg ,soft fruits , any fruit with an outer skin – or potatoes . ALL the fruit and veg we buy could just as easily be sold in cardboard packs or paper bags or even ‘nets’ – it is only for the stores convenience that plastic bags are used as its easier to pre weigh and portion them for sale .
I melt my leftover plastic into a little ball and throw it into the river.
@Toby Fish: Dreadful ‘joke’.
@Orla Smith: you should have given a trigger warning. Didn’t mean to offend you. I hope you don’t think that I’m a Nazi?
@Toby Fish: LOL, I did Nazi that coming!!
@Pixie McMullen: Enough with the Hitler jokes. They make me Fuhrer-ious.
@Pixie McMullen: Enough with the Hitler jokes. They make me Fuhrer-ious.
@Toby Fish: All Reich mate
@Pixie McMullen: it was fun but she will be back soon to be outraged. Laters
@Pixie McMullen: it was fun but she will be back soon to be outraged. Laters
@Toby Fish: asshxxx
@Orla Smith: Your accounts interact with each other way too much. Stop making it so obvious.
Jaysis. That was actually embarrassing to witness
It doesn’t matter whether the supermarkets are legally-obliged to accept it, if significant numbers of people are going to take the plastic off products before leaving the supermarket, the supermarkets will ultimately change their behaviour and force their suppliers to change their behaviour in relation to packaging products in single-use plastic.
@Kevin Farrell: they won’t. The whole reason they have it is to reduce staff numbers and waste. Far easier and cheaper to just let customers take it off and collect it afterwards
@Kevin Farrell: maybe by 2050 … whether they have to collect the plastic or the customer does, wishy/washy slow burn approach .. the biggest incentive they have to reduce the packaging on their products is the loss of sales – maintaining sales with packaging collection that they are already paying for and that they are not technically or all that clearly obliged to take on location according to the article ? thats quite a bit less of an incentive.
@Kevin Farrell: No, it won’t make a lick of difference. The packaging either goes in your green bin at home or in the supermarket’s green dumpsters. You have already BOUGHT the packaging. They don’t care whether or not you take it home or leave it there.
According to the convoluted script above, I gather that the only person or entity being penalized for purchasing goods which are plastic wrapped is the customer and they’re penalized twice; once when they buy the wrapped product and again if they use a garbage disposal company as they charge for their services. It’s a massive scandal and ripoff and the only 2 groups profiting are, ironically, Repak and the garbage disposal companies. The local authorities should be responsible for household collections which should have been included in the property tax, but of course vested interests win out again in our corrupt little country.
@Liam Mernagh: So true.
@Liam Mernagh: agree on the idea of property tax, I have seen it work in another country where its put to use for the exact area its collected for the right services of that area, ie rubbish,sewage, roads public spaces and school in the area.
it also helps keep house prices in check or more naturally market driven. or at least keeps it away from being credit driven .. lets hope we never get back to that.
Don’t quite agree on the idea we are being ripped off.
if the packaging say was 100% recyclable – you would still be paying for it
and where as its probably impossible to shop somewhere where are options to buy without the packaging .. there is scope to do this in some way or for some part of the weekly shop for most. this will hurt the supermarkets/retailers using packaging most and reward the ones that use less.
Strip off the plastic as you move the shopping from the trolley into your car. Leave the plastic in the trolley and just return the lot to the trolley bay.
@Ger Byrne: leaving the poor person working on the trolley bay to clean up rubbish you ? Well done. .
@Ger Byrne:
Great,
I do that on a regular basis, I usually put all the packaging into one of their small plastic bags, knot it and leave it in the trolly:
@Darcy: *your rubbish
@Darcy: not my rubbish. If they stopped using the Non recyclable wrap on product, we would not have the problem.
Londis had Single Turnip/Swedes shrink wrapped in plastic recently.
@Ger Byrne: dress it up whatever way you want to but you bought the shopping and left the store with it so its your rubbish that you’re dumping in the trolley for someone to clean up after you .
@Darcy: That’s sorta the point Darcy. A protest is a cost and an inconvenience for the supermarket. That’s the only way to force them to make a change.
@Ger Byrne: or they just charge us all more for it in the price .. and we continue to consume it ..
You buy so you recycle when you’re home its not up to the supermarket or store to do your recycling for you
@Carol Mc Cabe: Most of the LDPE plastic isn’t even currently recycled. Better off to reduce than to recycle.
@Carol Mc Cabe: If they had to dispose of the packaging and pay to do it you’d see them hurry up the reduction of plastics pretty quick.
@Carol Mc Cabe: First, just no. Second, this is primarily about single use non recyclable plastics.
@Gerry McGuinness: they already do pay for its disposal either through repak or other collection, They can simply pass this price on to us.
They have either beind doing this already, Or the cost is not prohibitive enough to sell produce with less or no single use plastic.
Biggest incentive they have is to lose sales .. they can’t pass that on to anyone .. it also means the retailers that sell with less packaging are rewarded .. no need for laws to be written ..no need for lame demonstrations such as the one in this article .. like anything worth doing its usually hard to do
Fully realise for most or many its not possible to do this without a good bit of effort or cost.
but its up to us, do we want to pay now? .. or do we want to pay later?
Near me are 5 supermarkets – Tesco, Centra, Lidl, Aldi and Dunnes. The only one that sells loose veg is Dunnes. Tesco used to but all their veg seems to be packaged now
@Rebekah Corbett: I buy loose Tomatoes, Potatoes, Mushrooms, Oranges etc as i generally shop for one and don`t like waste. Then i put them all into plastic bags and bring them home, can`t get through the checkout with a handful of mushrooms, 2 Oranges and a Tomato,Don`t get me started on those self checkout things
@Pixie McMullen: I usually only shop for one too which is why I do most of my shopping in Dunnes now.
@Pixie McMullen: I bring a paper bag for the loose veg and they remove the items at the checkout and weigh them. For heavy items like potatoes and fruit I use a hemp bag.
@Pixie McMullen: I bring a paper bag for the soft veg and fruit and a hemp bag for the heavier ones like potatoes apples etc.
@Rebekah Corbett: I was going to say that about Tesco. Their statement that they are trying to reduce plastic packaging is just pure bull. Every single fresh food item that used to be available unwrapped is now sold in prepacked plastic containers. Want one apple for your lunch? Good luck with that. Need a handful of loose mushrooms for that one recipe? Yeah right. It’s a joke
Do it anyway. What are they going to do about it?!
@Bi88les: Take follow you out and hand it back to you, I’ve seen that done to people leavign rubbish on tills before. Or is you get abusive about it bar you from the shop
I think the meaning of Recycle got lost somewhere,most of what is produced is not recyclable…
Eh… taking it off in the supermarket doesn’t do anything anyway. The issue is not transporting a few extra grams of plastic home. It’s that it was produced unnecessarily.
It *probably* would encourage them to stop using so much. But in and of itself, it’s not really doing anything for the environment.
@Gerard: exactly. The point is they need to stop selling fruit and veg with so much packaging
I regularly see people putting BANANAS in a plastic bag. Crazy
@Aisling: Bananas!
Wait hold on a moment, the main problem plastic is ‘soft’ plastic, you cannot put this into the recycling bin as it currently can’t be recycled (in Ireland anyway). So. I think, this needs to be reviewed by the Journal as to who is taking what plastic, if it is rigid/hard plastic it can be recycled in your bin, if it’s soft it cannot and goes in black bin. In that case can the soft plastic be left behind.
I remember years ago the fruit and veg would be loose and the super markets had self service scales so you could weigh them and print the barcode yourself. That system could be brought back
@Darren Tully: I imagine printing the barcode yourself was stopped due to abuse of the system.
Varadkar “cutting down his meat intake”
@Dan Black: Wink wink nudge nudge.
What are they going to do, call the litter warden? If it gets them to take action on reducing wasteful packaging (by lobbying their suppliers) it’s worth doing.
Aldi speaking out of both sides of their mouth. They have added to the range of plastic packaged bananas in recent months. Shameful.
Arguably you are not buying the plastic so just leave it there. The label says “bananas” not “bananas plus plastic wrap”.
Leaving it at the supermarket in bins only moves the problem rather than remove the problem. We need to stop producing so many plastics and in particular disposable plastics, go back to papers and glass.
Ireland is an embarrassment compared with other countries when it comes to carbon footprints and other environmental issues.
1) Buy stuff with no packaging
2) Do you really need it?
3) Leave unnecessary packaging at checkout, don’t ask for permission.
https://www.onebrownplanet.com/life_before_plastic/ What comes around goes around.Maybe we should go back to our old ways?But then the plastics industry is huge and the reduction in production would have massive commercial implications.
The trouble is members of Repak may be paying towards the cost of recycling of their packaging but most of their packaging is not recyclable. It is just window dressing to make them look responsible.
@Ray Noble: is there any alternative company to ‘repak’ or are they the only company to operate this service ? are their not laws about companies having a monopoly on trade ? also if ‘repak ‘(as reported) is ”paying for the collection of household recycle bins” why does my bin company charge me for the same service ? seems like a big scam to me -buy hey ! whats new !
What about the plastic in food.
@TamuMassif2019: margarine – just a few chemical steps from crude oil !
What difference to the environment would it make if we left packaging at till or brought it home and recycled?
Supermarkets could in theory offer to recycle your unwanted plastic and cardboard packaging.
Plastics however would need to be sorted into clear and coloured in order to be accepted for recycling.
Sadly in practice, there are always going to be people who are just too lazy to sort their unwanted packaging and just throw it into one container.
So Sinead Moriarty is littering the supermarket…hope they throw her out the next time
Do away with breakfast cereal boxes! They can ship crisps half way around the world with them being crushed or needing a cardboard box, can do same with cereals!
The people who think that leaving their packaging in the supermarket is going to make the retailer stop using excess packaging, aren’t thinking at all. The packaging either goes in your green bin at home or in the supermarket’s green skips. The supermarket doesn’t care if you throw it away, or they do – you have already BOUGHT it.
The only way to get them to change is to buy products that use little or no packaging at all. Supermarkets only sell what people will buy – if their packaging stops people buying a product, that packaging will be gotten rid of.
Don’t start stripping the plastic off your food in the shop. All you are doing is making more work for the staff to clean up after you.
Outside every German supermarket there is a large bin for unnecessary packaging (cardboard, plastic) the German shopper can deposit it in the bin.
Well my conclusion is that they can only refuse to accept recycle. All else is rubbish they are creating.
Tescos have recently replaced their own brand of cardboard boxes of dishwasher tablets with plastic packs of same.
The trouble is members of Repak may be paying towards the cost of recycling of their packaging but most of their packaging is not recycleable. It is just window dressing to make them look responsible.
Repak has always given big shops a get out with packaging.
have your say