A businessman has been given an 18-month suspended sentence after he admitted to carrying out a campaign of harmful communications against a golf manager at Druids Glen Golf Club in Co Wicklow. Passing sentence at Wicklow Circuit Criminal Court on Tuesday, Judge Sinéad Ní Chúlacháin said Niall Barry (73), of Coolnavee, Hillside, Greystones, had orchestrated a “sustained, persistent and vile” campaign of abuse against Marcus Doyle on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and by email. The court heard Barry wrote to hundreds of golf clubs across the country making baseless allegations against Doyle, and that these impacted on Doyle’s personal and professional relationships and standing, his mental health, prospects of promotion and career development.The court heard Barry had a grievance over the governance of Druids Glen and later with Golf Ireland, formerly the Golfing Union of Ireland, when that body rejected his complaint against the club. Barry subsequently began a campaign against Doyle, calling him “a liar” and “a weasel” and saying he was “untrustworthy”. Garda Derek Kelly, of Newtownmountkennedy station, told the court he spoke to the defendant about the campaign and he stood over his claims and social media activity. Kelly said he charged Barry with sending harmful communications, contrary to Section 4 of the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020. Barry pleaded guilty earlier this year. However, he subsequently tried to withdraw his plea and made a number of allegations against his legal team. The allegations were subsequently withdrawn. In a victim impact statement, Doyle said the campaign “repeatedly targeted my professional reputation” calling him, among other insults, “a narcissist”. This was despite him having no role in Barry’s complaint to the club and about the club to Golf Ireland. Doyle said the “volume of comments” about him was “staggering” and targeted his relationships with his colleagues and members at Druids Glen. He said the campaign was relentless and designed “to destroy me”. He said he went for an interview with another golf club in 2020 and was asked about Barry’s campaign. He did not get the position and attributed the outcome to the false claims. He said the last months of his father’s life were marred by Barry’s invective and “my family felt powerless to protect me”. Doyle took up a new position at Woodbrook Golf Club in Co Dublin, but said Barry wrote to that club and turned up in person there to abuse him in front of staff, “calling me a “prick”, he said. He thanked “the members of Druids Glen who have stood by me” and said he hoped Barry would learn “from the damage he has caused”.Defence counsel Michael Bowman said Barry had “taken issue with” aspects of the club’s governance and subsequently had issues with Druids Glen and Golf Ireland. He said his client “felt Marcus Doyle was collateral damage”.Counsel said Barry now accepted his campaign was “unjust” and he would “make no excuse for it”. He said the defendant had come to appreciate the damage he had done. He said his client was offering to pay Doyle €25,000, not as compensation but “a gesture of remorse ... an expression of genuine apology”. The judge said the offences were at the higher end of the scale and a headline sentence of 24 months was appropriate. She reduced it to 18 months after taking into account Barry’s guilty plea, his offer of €25,000 “as a token of remorse” and his offer not to contact Doyle and to erase whatever social media posts remained. She suspended the sentence for five years on condition that Barry not contact Doyle directly or indirectly for 10 years.