A Dublin man who lost Intel 6,000 hours of production after making a hoax bomb threat has been hit with 200 hours of community service, after the judge, and practically everyone else in court, agreed he was not the brains of the operation.

Colin Hammond, a 21-year-old of Bath Road, Dublin, made two calls to Intel’s Leixlip factory in January purporting to be from Islamic State and claiming to have planted bombs at the fab.

Hammond made the calls from a public phone box 50m from his house at the instigation of a friend with whom he had been “drinking and taking tablets” and who didn’t want to go to work at the factory the following day.

The malingering mate slipped Hammond a whole €30 for the favour. "He hates work and I made a phone call so he wouldn't have to go to work," the hapless Hammond told the court.

That €30 investment certainly paid dividends. As well as shuttering the multi-billion dollar factory, and keeping 4,000 workers away from their jobs – including the hung-over friend – the threat resulted in the closure of a motorway and the disruption of air traffic control.

Despite Hammond's spectacular success in achieving his objective, the judge described him as “profoundly stupid”. The Garda bringing the case concurred, while Hammond’s brief John Costello submitted that Hammond was “not the brains of the operation” and was “gullible and open to suggestion”.

Just how brainless Hammond was was demonstrated a month after the alert, when a taxi driver arrived at Balbriggan Garda Station with a passenger – Hammond – who was refusing to pay his fare. A cop recognised Hammond’s voice as the same one on the hoax call. ®