A man has been warned that his “liberty” is in jeopardy after he was convicted for an eighth time for having no insurance.

Kieran Michael Doogan with an address of Railway Crescent, Belcoo was found guilty of using a motor vehicle without insurance, having no driving licence, failing to wear a seatbelt and having three defective tyres on the car he was driving.

The court heard that on May 31, 2018 police on the Marble Arch Road, Enniskillen stopped a Volkswagen Passat that was being driven by the defendant. They observed that he was not wearing a seatbelt and on further inspection of the car, they saw three of the tyres were defective.

The 37 year old was cautioned and told he had to produce his insurance and driving licence to police within seven days.

Checks carried out on June 26 showed that Doogan had failed to produce the required documentation.

Doogan’s solicitor, Gary Black, told the court that the most concerning aspect of this was that it was his client’s eighth conviction for having no insurance. He said, however, it was positive that the vast majority of these were before 2003 and there was a significant gap to the most recent one in 2014, which had only been dealt with over a month ago.

Mr. Black said this was due to his client moving between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Mr. Black said his client wanted to “wipe the slate clean” and regularise matters. The defendant already had a suspended sentence of two years and Mr. Black asked for this case to be dealt with in a similar way. The court also heard that Doogan was driving the car as a favour and was notified that it was insured but because he had no licence he was not covered. And in respect of the tyres, the defendant was not aware of the defects as it was not his car. Mr. Black also said that police only became aware of the car when hey saw Doogan putting on his seatbelt while the car was moving.

District Judge Michael Ranaghan said Doogan had a substantial record of no insurance but there was a relative gap however it did pass the custody threshold.

He sentenced Doogan to five months, suspended for three years, disqualified him for three years and fined him £475 for all offences.