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AN AER LINGUS worker who helped smuggle illegal immigrants into the country has been jailed for four years.
Peter Kernan (57), who underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery four months ago, was sentenced in Dublin Circuit Court today for his role in a people trafficking operation at Dublin Airport last year.
His co-accused, Frederick Cham, also received a four-year sentence last month.
Kernan, with an address in Rectory Lodge, Celbridge, Co Kildare, pleaded guilty to four counts of facilitating the entry of an illegal immigrant into the State at Dublin Airport between 29 December 2016 and 22 January 2017.
He also pleaded guilty to three counts of handling the proceeds of crime at various locations between November 2014 and January 2017.
The total amount of money laundered was €40,366, prosecuting barrister, Garret Baker BL, told the court.
Sentencing Kernan, Judge Martin Nolan said human trafficking was a very serious matter and that people paid “huge amounts of money” to get into the country.
He said he believed Kernan and Cham played equal roles in the operation and deserved the same sentence of four years.
Inspector Michael Buckley of the Garda National Immigration Bureau said a Garda operation was launched after an illegal immigrant who had flown into Dublin Airport on 8 January 2017, attempted to get on a flight to London the next day.
The man was arrested and his entry into the country was investigated. Examination of CCTV footage of Dublin Airport revealed the man had been helped to circumnavigate immigration at the airport by Kernan and Cham, both Aer Lingus ground staff members.
Further investigations revealed both men helped a number of foreign nationals to bypass Dublin Airport’s passport control by using staff swipe cards to access an employee gate that wasn’t being watched.
When arrested, Kernan told gardaí he was paid between €2000 to €3000 for every person trafficked into the country.
Either he or Cham would get a text from someone in Madrid to indicate that somebody was coming into Dublin Airport, the court heard.
Once the plane got to the air bridge, Kernan would meet the foreign national off the plane and escort him to the immigration hall. Before entering this hall, he would bring the foreign national into a nearby lift where Cham was waiting.
The men would then exit the lift at ground level wearing high-vis Aer Lingus vests and travel in a catering truck to a nearby hangar. It was here, via a staff turnstile gate, that the foreign national would move from air-side to land-side and enter the country.
Kernan, who has no previous convictions apart from one road traffic matter, worked for Aer Lingus for 10 years in the catering and loading department. At one stage, he was a union shop steward for his colleagues. He has since been fired.
Defence barrister, Seamus Clarke SC, said his client was under severe financial stress at the time of the offending due to his marriage breakdown.
He said Kernan only got involved when Cham told him about the operation and invited him to take part. Kernan and Cham were close friends and Kernan was best man at Cham’s wedding, the court heard.
Clarke said Kernan has a number of serious health problems, including his heart condition and the presence of a cancer gene which increased his chance of developing prostate cancer. He has a new partner and two adult children.
He urged Judge Nolan to be lenient when imposing sentence.
Cham (63) of Railway Cottages, Hazelhatch, Celbridge, Co. Kildare, pleaded guilty to five charges of facilitating the entry of an illegal immigrant at Dublin Airport on dates between 13 December 2016 and 22 January 2017.
He also admitted two charges of handling money which he knew to be the proceeds of crime on dates in December 2016 and January 2017.
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So his little jolly at our expense was completely f****** worthless.
His “jolly” as you call it is happening next week. It is in the article: “Finance Minister Michael Noonan will meet with a number of eurozone finance ministers next week in a bid to gain support for a deal on Ireland’s banking debt. Meetings with his French, German and Italian counterparts are all planned before Noonan travels to Cyprus where European finance ministers will all meet on Friday.”
The billderberg jolly Ryan.
Of course it will fail, why would somebody let you pay back less if you are already making good on present repayments.
Who remembers that P—- Kenny spouting about how this was going to be dealt with in September? The man’s a complete Sap! And that other neanderthal Noonan’s not far behind. How in gods name do the Irish people tolerate that pair!
Lol….yeah…that’s why they got elected and you’re posting comments on a website…because you’re such a genius. :)
Was that at me Tom?
No at Rodrigo, as his comments were nothing more that silly name calling. :)
Smoke and mirrors people. Anything to keep the attention away from the €1 Billion being handed to unguaranteed bondholders on 1st october.
I should just add, anybody that thinks michael noonan can on one hand attend a bilderberg meeting, and on the other be genuinely fighting for the irish peoples best interests in Europe needs their heads examined.
i remember people like me talking years ago about the bilderberg group.people looked at me as if i needed my head examined.amazing how things change.
At least we have outsiders to keep us informed of the real likelihoods and not just govt. spin
At our Government Ministers level of day to day incompetence , is anyone really surprised?
Europe already has our Ministers marked down as completely incapable of doing the good deal , when we have continued to pay the Senior Bondholders at 100c in the €uro , when they would have delighted to have settled for 25c in the €uro.
I serve on an International Board with some German Colleagues , who constantly giggle at the policy of our Government towards their Banks – they would have settled long ago – just to recover anything.
Just look at the write-offs they are settling for in Greece?
It’s terrible looking for answers mick eh?! That’s what the rest of us feel like looking for answers from this government….get used to it!
I’m not suprised.
Les..of course it was worthless….we have no voice in Europe in this crisis and they couldn’t give a tinkers curse about this country. We have and will be at the mercy of their whims and nothing Noonan or Kenny do will change that. Anything we’ve got from them have been on the coat tails of France and Italy and not on the strenght of anything our crowd have done..if we do get some deal on the banking promisary notes(which we should NEVER,EVER have given) it’ll be months down the road.
Yes Daniel their great at meeting their target but not at their expence or the people who caused all this , Its the joe soap in the street that’s paying to meet their targets . So wake up man !!
of course we’ll fair. The big bad wolf Troika will growl and Noonan will shit himself.
fail i meant
This is not good news but one must never give up hope.
A lot of us gave up hope on this government long ago!
I wouldn’t hold much stock in this. Media outlets have consistently underestimated this government and Enda Kenny. This government has a history of not only meeting goals but exceeding them in this regard.
Got to love the thejournal.ie to reporting another news agencies’ news without actually having to go to the trouble of interviewing anyone or getting a statement. Arm chair journalism at it’s best.
Hi Daniel,
We did get a statement from the Department of Finance in response to a direct question about the Bloomberg report which they did not address. If you re-read the piece you might spot it.
Hugh
Hugh, I said get one, you didn’t get one. How many TD’s offices did you phone?
Daniel,
We did get one. It’s in the story.
Hugh
Daniel can i borrow ur glasses because I cant spot the part of your comment where you ask for one of anything. As many say about many things….If you dont like *blank, dont look at *blank. No one is forcing you to read the journals articles
Sorry, where is that quote? Was this TD the “Department of Finance spokesperson”? If so why not give his name in the article? Seems to me like thejournal.ie is yet again regurgitating and repackaging other news outlet’s reports. Seems to me that there is a lot of this going on the journal.ie
In any case i look forward to the article that states “bank debt deal achieved in October contrary to Bloomberg report that we published”.
I am sorry Daniel but the comment from the spokesperson was obtained from the spokesperson at the Department of Finance who I spoke to. It is common practice not to give their name as you will see with other news outlets.
I suggest you back up your claims that “thejournal.ie is yet again regurgitating and repackaging other news outlet’s reports” rather than claiming that it seems that way to you when that is not the case.
“Unnamed sources”…lol.
In journalism speak, that’s code for “we really didn’t ask anybody”.
:) Sunday Independent style journalism.
Do FGers get expenses for having 3 4 5 names.
are you an alien or do you live under a rock?
Daniel and Tom would probably suggest the disabled people outside the Dail begging for retention of their rights to health services was just an act orchestrated by the media….#ostriches.
Dermot,
What a reprehensible a vile little man you are. You know nothing of my family.
You’re a nasty little piece of work for using someone else’s disabilty for point scoring. I can spot feigned indignation a mile away.
You know nothing of my family, you little nasty man.
What a vile comment.
Stop playing the victim (again) publicly or try spin your pathetic psychology with me – you can spot feigned indignation a mile away??? how dare you you pathetic creep, don’t be casting assumptions at people who disagree with whatever bile you’re currently spewing, you know nothing about me either and don’t pretend you do…my outrage is not fake and is indeed personal but you FG lackeys prefer not to hear such stuff, to you all is well until you’re back warming the opposition benches – then, and by god then we will see feigned indignation.
Of course they’ll kick the can down the road. We’re paying them a nice interest rate at the moment and they’re in no hurry to change that. By the time they get around to adjusting our rates we’d have most of it payed off.
Wait, so is it that Greece can not pay or threatin so and generally hold the EU up and Spains banks got bailed out by well Irish taxpayer?
I’m off to the pub!
best suggestion all day
even if there is a deal the taxpayer will still have to pay back every cent.
that’s what we get for electing tra cheers, farmers, publicans and offspring of dead TDs to bat for us.
teachers, not tra cheers. stupid predictive text!
yea i mean teachers like for politicians. Sure teachers basically go to school in total for what 20 odd years. They are not capable of thinking outside the box as they were in that box for so long and now they work in the box. You’ll get no new solutions or progressive from them believe me. They are just too institutionalised.
I want to cry, when will this nightmare end.
Where will this all end, somebody please tell me, if I take out a loan, I agree to pay it back over a fixed time so clearing my debt, the mess we signed up seems to be never ending
it will most likely end in violence. oppressed citizens always rise up, it just takes Irish people longer than other nations.
No one to lead us there either Ciarán. We are indeed a bunch of losers. We deserve this shit thrown at us.
here’s a suggestion for Mr Noonan, when you attend the next meeting of Europes great and good, tell them that the Irish people will be holding onto Octobers payment to the bondholders and any future payments will be dependent on us getting a deal brokered ,signed and delivered by the end of October, if they fail to meet this deadline then no further payments will be made. its called ‘playing hard ball’ or calling their bluff. if we had taken this approach from the beginning we would not be seen as a pushover and be bullied into paying for what we don’t owe.
So simple but so effective…. Noonan is not up for that, you would need someone like Adams or Doherty to do what u suggest. And I’m not a SF supporter yet…. Actually I’m not a supporter of any political party…. Might start my own… Any good names?
ODPP – Ordinary Decent People’s Party…
Or PP – Paddies Party….
NTP – No Teacher Party….
2FP – 2 Faced Party
Time to default and bring the whole lot down around them. We can’t get much lower than we are now and there will be no improvement for years. We are not now talking about a lost generation we are talking about several lost generations.
Jim has it bang on and all the FG/Lab spin won’t change it. We have prostrated ourselves before Europe, and where had it gotten us? We haven’t gotten an inch, not a bloody inch! Even though we have guaranteed unsecured bond holders and became poster boys for austerity on a trams continental scale. Where has it gotten us? The conditions of our arrangement were agreed already, so the government narrative that they are ‘working with us’ is total nonsense. They are simply making sure that we are implementing enough hardship on our people that our German overlords remain appeased.
People, we are not stupid, so we know the time to say enough has come and passed, but we can still resurrect some national pride and stand up for ourselves! Ffs we are not dead…
ah sure jaysus we fail at most things political and economic anyway dont we? who the bloody hell would be so foolish to tie up to this crowd in the first place and sell our soul this way?
Why exactly are we all up in arms when there is nothing concrete or factual? Its speculation. You will get other sites speculating otherwise. Welcome to the world of media – even theJournal does it.
Its not a question of “if” we will get a deal but a case of “when” we will get it.
fact: the taxpayer has already given billions to the banks.
fact: we are paying interest on the loans .we were given to pay back the loans we didnt take out.
fact: you cant tax your way out of a recession.
fact: The government don’t give a shit.
enough facts?
@ Ciaran:
“fact: you cant tax your way out of a recession.”
fact: The spending cuts to tax increases ratio in next years Budget is 2:1.
Would you be instead in favour of 100% spending cuts?
where is mjhint Patrick
wait i’ll come with you lol. lol.
have your say