A 4 year sentence handed down to a drunk driver who caused a head-on crash killing 3 people and an unborn baby in Co. Monaghan has been struck down as unduly lenient by the Court of Criminal Appeal.
Kevin McArdle of Longfield in Carricmacross is now facing the possibility of going back to prison having been released from jail at the end of last month.
He was 3-and-a-half times over the legal alcohol limit and on the wrong side of the road when he crashed into a car on the Carrickmacross by-pass, two days after Christmas in 2010.
Two of his friends, Glen Curtis and Paul Carroll, both aged 27, were killed along with the passenger in the other car, 39-year-old Roisin Connolly and her unborn daughter.
McArdle was given a 4 year sentence and disqualified from driving for 12 years at Carrickmacross Circuit Court in 2011.
The DPP has today won an appeal in which it argued that the sentence was unduly lenient given the excess of alcohol taken, the lives lost, and the manner the BMW vehicle was driven.
Barrister Michael Bowman BL said Mr. McArdle had shown limited insight into the devastating consequences of his actions and he called the crash 'an accident waiting to happen'.
The court was told Kevin McArdle drank 9 pints of Carlsberg and 5 shots of brandy and drove to at least 4 different pubs without ever considering not driving.
Michael O'Higgins SC for Mr. McArdle, said his client knows that his actions were wrong, not just unlawful.
He is now asking the 3-judge court to consider community service as an alternative to sending him back to prison. The court will decide on a new sentence this afternoon.
