Boxer who rained down blows on Kevin Lunney with 'lethal weapons' fails in appeal

A man's appeal against a three-year-three-month prison sentence for assaulting two businessmen near Ballyconnell, County Cavan, has been dismissed by the Court of Appeal. James Bernard McGovern, aged 24, had pleaded guilty in March to a Section 3 assault against Kevin Lunney, whom he repeatedly punched at an Apple Green Service Station in February 2019. He also admitted a Section 2 assault against Dara O'Reilly after throwing boiling water at him in the station's dining area. Mr Justice George Birmingham, President of the Court of Appeal, rejected McGovern's claim that the sentence was excessive, describing the attack as displaying "ferocity and savagery". The judge noted that McGovern, an accomplished boxer, had inflicted a broken nose and eye damage on Mr Lunney, and remarked that in other jurisdictions such injuries caused by a trained fighter's fists would be considered caused by lethal weapons. Mr Justice Birmingham found the offending constituted an act of revenge following the appellant's father's loss of employment at Quinn Industrial Holdings, and was a very serious matter warranting the custodial term imposed.