Niall Donald

I think of Kevin Lunny, the state's case was that the DNA had come from those men abducting Kevin Lunny and then they transplanted that DNA onto the van.

Now the van was, you know, tests were done and the van was taken into police custody.

but there had been a fire at the station and the van had been destroyed.

So that was one of the grounds on which they appealed it.

Yeah.

For their clients.

Then there was the other ground, that was rejected by the special criminal court.

The other grounds, I suppose, are kind of standard grounds for the appeals.

One of them was in relation to the use of phone evidence.

And the phone evidence, it was actually a really, really long case.

And the phone evidence was quite central.

And I won't get into it.

burner phones bouncing off cell towers and all of that, basically because I don't remember it fully to understand it.

But that was very key evidence.

Yes, and some of this centered around the case brought in by Graeme Dwyer actually to the European Court of Human Rights.

But again, that was rejected by the appeals court.

And then there was a further grounds in relation to CCTV, which again is a sort of a standard ground that the CCTV shouldn't have been used.

And they are lengthy sentences, but I mean, the crime is a particularly barbaric crime.

But certainly if you look at the types of sentences, lengthy sentences you receive in an Irish court, sort of tiger kidnappings, false imprisonments, any sort of thing involving torture.

You know, 30 years is particularly long, but it's not maybe out of kilter with some of the other very, very lengthy sentences you see for equivalent crimes, which absolutely are almost always well over a decade.