A Cork man who robbed a bank by handing a cashier a note claiming he had a gun, and then apologising in the same note, has been jailed.

Noel O’Brien, 42, of 68 Maryborough Court, Douglas, pleaded guilty to robbing the Bank of Ireland branch in Douglas Village Shopping Centre.

The court heard he carried out the robbery to clear a €4,000 cocaine debt, which he had been threatened over. He had no previous convictions.

At an earlier hearing, Detective Garda Tom Delaney said a man with his face covered walked into the branch just before 2pm on November 19 of last year and handed the teller a note.

The note said the writer’s name was ‘Jack’, that he could not speak and that he had a gun in his pocket. It told the cashier to put the notes in an envelope, to wait five minutes before raising the alarm, and finished by thanking them and apologising.

Fearing for their safety, the cashier handed over €6,260.

CCTV showed O’Brien going into the shopping centre’s toilets, where a jacket, baseball cap, snood and gloves were later found in a cubicle. He then took a taxi home.

He later told Gardai he took €4,000 of the money and got a bus to meet people to pay off the debt.

Det. Garda Delaney, who knew O’Brien, rang him and arranged to meet him at a Circle K garage nearby at 5.30pm that day. O’Brien’s first words to him were an apology.

Of the money taken, €1,680 was recovered. The bank’s loss of €4,580 was never recovered.

Defence barrister Mahon Corkery said O’Brien was in active addiction at the time and believed a lunchtime robbery would be quiet and affect fewer people. He had lain awake the night before trying to find a way to pay the debt.

Judge Helen Boyle said the cashier had no way of knowing the gun did not exist, so the robbery must have been terrifying. She noted O’Brien had fallen back into drug addiction a number of times.

She set a headline sentence of four-and-a-half years, reduced it to three years for the guilty plea, and suspended the final 18 months, leaving O’Brien with 18 months in custody.