Pair stole donations from safes in Carlow cathedral
Carlow Courthouse
TWO men have been sentenced to jail time after twice damaging safes in and stealing donations from Carlow cathedral. Wayne Robinson (35) of no fixed abode and Lee Keating (40), 14 Caislean Court, Carlow pleaded guilty to two incidents of criminal damage at a hearing in November last year.
At Carlow Circuit Court last week, Garda Dallan Goulding said the pair entered Carlow cathedral on 16 August 2025 and, using a hammer and chisel, opened the safe and stole €150 in offerings that had been left by parishioners. Gardaí attended the church the next day and identified the two accused persons on CCTV footage.
On 22 August 2025, the same two accused again entered Carlow cathedral with a hammer and chisel and attempted to open a second collection safe. They did not obtain any money but again caused damage to the safe. The total cost of repairs to the safes was estimated at €6,000.
The pair were arrested in September and admitted to the offences, saying they had done it to feed their drug addiction.
Mr Robinson has 48 previous convictions and Mr Keating has 70. In a garda interview, Mr Robinson said he was living in a tent, was taking heroin and crack cocaine at a cost of €1,000 a week and was under the influence at the time he committed the offence.
Barrister John Madden, defending Mr Robinson, said his client was very ashamed of the offending and that he sought forgiveness. He said addiction had “blighted” the entirety of his client’s life and that he was addressing that in prison. He has reduced his methadone intake from 70ml daily to 7ml.
While Mr Madden suggested “there are some shoots of hope” regarding Mr Robinson’s future employment status, the judge objected to that, saying his stints in work had ended some time ago.
Tara Geoghegan BL for Mr Keating noted that he, too, was reducing his methadone prescription while in prison and that he has “fantastic support waiting for him” from his family and Focus Ireland when he is released. She said her client had started taking drugs at 14 years’ old. He has no previous convictions for criminal damage and took full responsibility for the offending.
“I’m absolutely sure that whatever they were offering the money for it was not in expectation that it would be passed on to criminals or drug dealers,” Judge O’Kelly noted, saying it was aggravating that they had used a hammer and chisel to commit the offences and had worked together. Both men were on bail for other offences at the time.
He set a headline sentence at five years in prison, reducing it to three years and nine months in both cases because of their guilty pleas and evidence of remorse.
He suspended the final one year and three months of Mr Robinson’s sentence, noting it will commence on the expiry of the sentence he is currently serving, but gave him credit for time spent in prison exclusively for this offence.
Similarly, Mr Keating was given credit for the seven months he has already spent in jail and Judge O’Kelly suspended the final year of his sentence for a period of one year.
