Five home-heating oil distribution companies and three company directors were fined a total of €37,500 at Galway Circuit Criminal Court today for being involved in a cartel that fixed the price of home-heating oil in Galway city and county.

Muldoon Oil Ltd of Loughrea and its former director, Conrad Muldoon; Matt Geraghty Oil Co Ltd, Williamstown; All Star Oil, Carnmore Cross, and its director, Seán Hester; Hi-Way Oil, New Docks, Galway, and its director Kevin Thomas Cunniffee; and Mór Oil, Lough Atalia Road, Galway, all pleaded guilty yesterday to entering into an agreement with other oil distributors that had as its object the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition in the gas oil trade by directly or indirectly fixing the selling price of gas heating oil, between January 1st, 2001 and February 11th, 2002.

David McFadden, legal adviser and officer with the Competition Authority, who headed the investigation, agreed with Bernard Madden SC, defending, that while all accused were members of the cartel and attended meetings to fix prices, they had acted like sheep being led by shepherds and had only been peripheral or small-time players in the cartel.

Mr McFadden added that the actual price of home-heating oil was 10 per cent higher in Galway while the cartel was in operation.

Judge Raymond Groarke said he accepted all of the accused had been led but it was they who had agreed to join the cartel, knowing that price-fixing was a serious criminal offence. He said the motivation for anyone to join a cartel was greed and the promise of financial reward at a serious cost to the consumer.

He accepted that Mr Muldoon had been the first person to plead guilty to the charges and he was the only one who had not waited for the outcome of last week's trial in which Michael Flanagan of Flanagan Oil, Loughrea, had been convicted of price fixing.

The judge fined Mr Muldoon €1,000 for his part in the cartel and he fined Muldoon Oil, which no longer trades, €3,500.