The Four Courts had got used to mounting major security operations for John Gilligan, but yesterday's could be the last for a long time.
While his lawyers are returning to the Court of Criminal Appeal next month to seek a Supreme Court review of his conviction, Gilligan faces the prospect of imprisonment until he is well into his 60s.
His appeal may have cut eight years off his sentence, but the 52-year-old still has 12-18 years to run, depending on remission, for a combination of offences, including drug-dealing and threatening prison officers while in custody.
For a man who has spent some of his time in solitary confinement, although less so in recent months, Gilligan looked surprisingly sprightly, with a healthy colour.
Wearing a light blue shirt open at the neck, dark trousers and black polished shoes, he could have been mistaken for a garda minus part of his uniform - but for the handcuffs, that is. They were removed only after Gilligan sat down on the prisoners' bench, uniformed gardaí on either side.
The two back rows of the small courtroom were filled with family members and friends. Gilligan acknowledged them with a grin and a wipe of his brow in mock nervousness.
Then he returned his hands to his knees, his forearms close together, as though he'd forgotten the chains had been taken off. The hearing lasted just five minutes and Gilligan sat impassively throughout, even when the court announced the reduction in his 28-year sentence for drug-related offences, handed down by the Special Criminal Court in March 2001.
Both it and a concurrent 12-year sentence for drug offences are backdated to 1996.
Gilligan has a further five years to serve after being convicted by the Special Criminal Court in June 2002 of threatening to kill two prison officers and their families.
Occasionally during yesterday's hearing Gilligan stared at the skylight above, smiling to himself, as though his mind was elsewhere.
When the court began to empty, some people from the gallery whispered sympathetic words in his direction but he didn't seem to hear.
He sat for a while talking to his legal team, shook the hand of his barrister Michael O'Higgins SC, and then was off - into the back of a blacked-out Garda van, protected by motorbike outriders and two Army jeeps, filled with armed troops in flak-jackets.
While the ruling may not have gone as far as he would have liked, there was some comfort from a friend who presented a gift for safekeeping to a Garda escort: a bag of Scots Clan and another of mints, to be enjoyed by Gilligan on his return to Portlaoise Prison.
