Man Who Posed as a Garda and Robbed 80-Year-Old Near Carrickmacross Gets Four Years
Patrick Harty, 53, of Sixmilebridge, Co Clare, was jailed for robbing an 80-year-old man of €500 outside his home near Carrickmacross in 2023 after pretending to be a plain-clothes garda.
By the Monaghan Brief staff·Edited by Seamus McKenna·Published · 2 min read
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Main Street, Carrickmacross, looking north. Archive location photograph; not a photo of the events in this story. Eric Jones · CC BY-SA 2.0. Resized and colour-graded; cropped in layout.
A 53-year-old Co Clare man who pretended to be a plain-clothes garda before robbing an 80-year-old man of €500 outside his home near Carrickmacross has been given prison sentences amounting to four years at Monaghan Circuit Court, the Anglo-Celt reports. Patrick Harty, of Sixmilebridge, pleaded guilty to robbing Eugene McBride at Carrickavoley on 21 October 2023. He told the court he has no memory of the incident.
What happened
Detective Garda Ciaran Marks told the court that Mr McBride was driving out his front gate when another car pulled up beside him. The driver said he was a plain-clothes garda and asked to see his driving licence. When Mr McBride went to put the licence back, Harty grabbed his wallet, which held €500 in cash. A struggle followed and Mr McBride was injured.
Northern Sound reported at the time that the robbery happened at about 12.40pm on a Saturday. Gardaí said the man in his 80s needed medical treatment afterwards.
CCTV from a nearby home identified the car's registration. The same day, it drove off without paying for €114.92 of diesel at a Carrickmacross filling station. It was later found abandoned in Dublin, and DNA and fingerprints matched Harty.
The sentence
Judge John Aylmer set a headline sentence of six and a half years. He reduced it to five years for the guilty plea, the apology and other mitigation, and suspended the final 12 months.
Harty got 14 months for the diesel theft, to run at the same time as the robbery sentence.
Both run after a sentence Harty is already serving for robberies in Dublin, which has a release date in 2030.
The court heard Harty has 170 previous convictions.
In a victim impact statement, Mr McBride, now 83, said the attack had left him "wary to go for a walk down the road." He did not want compensation and asked that any donation go to a cancer support group in Carrickmacross. For another recent Monaghan Circuit Court case, see the €5.25m cocaine plea.
Sources
This article is an original summary based on the following reporting. We encourage readers to visit the original sources for full coverage.
Arunas Racyla (54), a Lithuanian businessman living in Carrickmacross, pleaded guilty at Monaghan Circuit Criminal Court to possessing cocaine worth more than €5.25 million for sale or supply. He was remanded in custody for sentencing in January.
Luke Wall (33), who has 119 previous convictions, walked into small businesses during opening hours across five counties in the summer of 2025. Judge John Aylmer suspended the final 18 months to give him a chance at drug treatment.
Garda Tracy Donaghy of Carrickmacross Garda Station is urging people across Co Monaghan never to open a crypto account or wallet because someone on the phone told them to, after a national scam that took about €150,000 from seven people in a single week.
