A care assistant who stole more than €23,000 from the accounts of vulnerable residents at a HSE facility in Co Meath was jailed for 12 months at Trim Circuit Court on Tuesday.
The defendant used the money to pay for his Sky and Netflix subscriptions and to buy clothes and shoes, the court heard.
Father of three Edwin Gall (51), Grangerath, Drogheda, Co Louth, pleaded guilty to stealing a total of €23,144 from nine residents of Barden Lodge, Julianstown, Co Meath, on dates between March 2016 and February 2017.
“It was an appalling breach of trust,” said Judge Martina Baxter
The court heard the facility caters for up to 13 adult residents with intellectual disabilities .
All the residents have their own bank accounts which are managed by staff on their behalf with their ATM cards kept in a central safe, a garda told the court.
Purchases or cash withdrawals on behalf of the residents are made by staff members who are required to enter the amounts on separate expenses sheets for each resident.
Steal money
Gall had been able to steal money from the residents’ accounts by making withdrawals and entering a lesser amount on the expenses sheets.
In June 2016 a clinical nurse manager noticed that €500 had been withdrawn from the account of one resident. After the size of the withdrawal was spoken about in the house a €500 lodgement was made to the account.
Gall later told the manager there had been a technical issue in the bank.
When a further discrepancy was noticed in the same account eight months later the manager noticed payments had also been made to Sky and Netflix.
After a detailed audit of all the resident’s accounts was conducted Gall admitted to a manager that he had been taking money for about a year but said he did not know why.
A Garda investigation identified the amounts taken by cross-referencing the withdrawals on the accounts with CCTV from the ATMs . The court heard the HSE had refunded the residents for their losses.
The defence barrister said Gall was now unemployed but had borrowed €23,000 in compensation which he was repaying.
Judge Baxter sentenced Gall to concurrent terms of four years with the final three years suspended on each of nine charges.