Donegal Judge says court cannot continue to adjourn cases to facilitate gardaí as case list doubles
Donegal's Circuit Court Judge has said the court system cannot continue to adjourn cases to facilitate gardaí.
Judge John Aylmer voiced his annoyance at the ongoing situation as the list of criminal cases for the current three-week Letterkenny Circuit Court sitting reached more than 200 cases.
Advertisement
Judge Aylmer noted that the spiralling list had more than doubled from around 100 cases in the past 18 months.
As well as a list of 212 criminal cases for the current court session, there are extensive civil cases, licensing matters, and District Court appeals to address on the list.
Addressing the court on the first day of the current sittings yesterday, he told State prosecutor, Ms Fiona Crawford, that he wanted a message to go out 'loud and clear' to An Garda Síochána.
Judge Aylmer said that the schedule for the Circuit Court is known from October of each year.
Advertisement
He added that gardaí should not take holidays during sessions and that officers who aren't present should have to take an oath in the witness box to explain why.
And he warned of the consequences if the court was forced to adjourn cases because of the absence of gardaí.
He said: 'We can't facilitate guards in that way or we will have a list of 300 (cases).'
He said the State prosecution team should have clear instructions on cases by the start of the court term.
Judge Aylmer added, 'The list is taking too long to call because you don't know what the position is.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BreakingNews.ie
an hour ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Man (26) jailed for sexual assault of a woman in a park in Co Donegal
A young man who sexually assaulted a young woman in a park in Co Donegal after he claimed he "read the wrong signals" has been jailed for three years. Billy Diver appeared at Letterkenny Circuit Court after pleading guilty to the sexual assault at Swan Park in Buncrana on the evening of June 24th, 2020. Advertisement Diver, now aged 26, was with another friend when he saw two young women, aged 19, sitting on a bench in the park during what was Covid times. Garda Keith Conlon outlined the incident led by state barrister Ms Fiona Crawford, BL. It was around 8pm and the young women were walking around the park and two young men began chatting to them. The women began walking on and the two young men turned up again. Advertisement Suddenly one of the men grabbed one of the women and "dragged" her into some trees and grabbed her by the backside. The woman then told gardaí how the man then grabbed her right hand and forced it onto his penis. As she broke free the man then touched her vagina over her jeans. The woman said she was scared and moved across the grass area but the young men came over to them again. The same man then put his hand on her thigh and then began to put his hand over her vagina again before he put his hand down the back of her trousers and grabbed her backside. Advertisement The young woman phoned a friend and was crying at this stage but the court was told the young man grabbed her again and was trying to kiss her on the neck and lips despite her consistently asking him to stop. The two men then got into a van but the young woman was able to take a picture of the accused as other people present came to the assistance of the young woman. A mother and daughter who were also in the area also managed to get videos of the men leaving and they told Gardai what they had seen. The two girls approached another couple and asked them to talk to them as they were both very stressed and speaking very quickly. Advertisement This couple contacted gardaí with a description of the van. Gardaí arrived a short time later to find two distressed females who flagged them down and provided them with details of what had happened and a possible name of one of the men. Some time later a man presented himself at Buncrana Garda Station saying he wanted to report an incident of being hassled by people in the park including a mother and daughter who were filming him. That individual turned out to be the accused man. Advertisement When questioned by gardaí about the alleged incident, Diver said the incidents between him and the young woman were consensual, that she had taken his hands, smiled and they went behind a ditch. He said he then noticed that he was being recorded. Diver's clothing was then seized by investigating gardaí and he was then identified at the scene by phone footage. The court was told that Diver is from Derry and that he has no previous criminal convictions. A victim impact statement from the young woman told how her life changed on that day. Simple things like leaving her home causes her great anxiety, she constantly looks over her shoulder fearing she will be attacked again when she once felt safe. She has frequent nightmares reliving her trauma and cannot visit Swan Park again as it brings back so many traumatic moments. She has feelings of depression, shame and self-blame even though she knows it was not her fault and cannot trust others and cannot form new relationships. She also had to take time off work to attend counselling and that was a financial strain while her studies and career progression have also been affected. "It has changed the course of my life and I am scarred for life inside," the young woman said. Barrister for the accused, Mr Peter Nolan, BL, said it was his client's view that there were 'signals' coming from this young lady and that he misinterpreted them. He said the girls had looked over at Diver and his friend and began giggling at them and that he misread the situation and approached the girls. Mr Nolan said his client had never tried to hide or deny anything and that in his full memo of interview. Diver's barrister said he put it that his client had misread the situation and should have been more careful. Addressing his client's background, Mr Nolan said he had left school at 14 as he was not academic but had a full history of employment and works in Northern Ireland as a labourer. The Probation Service had placed him in the moderate to high risk of reoffending, that he has no medical issues and that he is capable of community service and is also willing to comply with the Probation Services. Mr Nolan again reiterated that Diver had 'misread the signals very, very, badly' and that he needs some maturity to his sexual behaviour but is entirely sorry for what he did. Diver took to the witness stand and said he would like to "deeply apologise" to the woman for the offence that happened saying his apology was from "the bottom of my heart." He added that he understood the seriousness of the situation and that he was deeply apologetic. Passing sentence, Judge John Aylmer said this was a "very nasty sexual assault on a young woman in a public park" adding there was "no question of her behaviour to you" and that it was clear that she was being harassed and set upon by Diver. He added that it was clearly a very frightening experience for the young woman noting she still suffers from anxiety and depression for the last four years. Judge Aylmer placed the offence in the mid range of such offences and one which merits a sentence of four years in prison before mitigation. He noted there was a late plea to the charge which was nevertheless valuable in these cases, that he has no previous convictions and that he was a very young man of 20 at the time. He said the Probation Service in Northern Ireland placed him at a moderate to high risk of reoffending because of his minimisation and tendency to victim blame when, the Judge said, "you have absolutely no grounds to blame her for anything, as it is clear that you were the predator preying on her and that was clear to all watching what was going on." He added that he will reduce the sentence to one of three years and that he considered suspending any of that sentence. However, because of the report of the Probation Service and the accused man's minimisation and victim blaming, he was not minded to suspend any portion of that three years sentence. If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can call the national 24-hour Rape Crisis Helpline at 1800-77 8888, access text service and webchat options at or visit Rape Crisis Help.
Telegraph
21 hours ago
- Telegraph
No more leprechaun economics: Ireland's tax swindle is finally ending
Donald Trump has sent Ireland to the naughty step. Once the altar boy of American commerce, Dublin now finds itself blacklisted alongside China, Germany and Vietnam, each a prime candidate for tariffs and sanctions. The offence? Running a surplus with the United States. On the face of it, the complaint seems petty. One country sells more than it buys. So what? But Ireland's problem, like the others on Trump's list, is that its surplus rests on a creed that has fallen out of favour. As offshoring hollowed out Middle America, the old Clinton mantra 'It's the economy, stupid' has begun to sound rather less clever than it once did. That, at least, is the mood in Trump's Washington. And judging by his campaign-trail fixation with the word tariff, many Americans agree: a reckoning is overdue. Ireland offers a particularly inviting target. Its surplus owes less to tangible exports than to tax gymnastics. A pill is made in Ireland for 50 cents, sold to a sister company (also in Ireland) for €10, and then shipped to the global market at the same price. The profit is booked in Dublin, while tax collectors elsewhere are left out of pocket. The trick doesn't stop there. Intellectual property is shifted to Irish subsidiaries, global sales are routed through Irish entities, and profits vanish into low or no-tax jurisdictions. Together, these sleights of hand form what we're invited to call the Irish economic miracle – a miracle that, by one estimate, deprives other countries of nearly $20 billion a year in tax revenue. The question being asked in Washington is: who benefits? Ireland, clearly. One in every eight euros of its tax revenue now comes from US firms. That's a fivefold increase since 2010, driven by Ireland's famously 'competitive' tax regime. It accounts for a large slice of a €150 billion bilateral surplus. When Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin visited the Oval Office in March, Trump put it plainly: 'We do have a massive deficit with Ireland, because Ireland was very smart. They took our pharmaceutical companies away.' It's hard to argue with the logic. Ireland has been undeniably clever at attracting American capital. Spending it is another matter. Much of the money sits on Irish books without generating the economic activity one might expect. The state's coffers may be overflowing, but the windfall is narrowly concentrated. Public spending, as ever, has been handled with something shy of brilliance. From roads and hospitals to housing and energy, the services most visible to the public have seen little improvement, despite years of surging revenues. Meanwhile, resources have been channelled into more headline-friendly ventures: a €350,000 bike shed outside parliament; a vast new hospital project already among Europe's most expensive; and billions annually to accommodate asylum applicants – most of whom, the government has conceded, are economic migrants. The miracle, it seems, left little room for prudence. As every lottery winner learns, easy money tends to breed excess. But with full coffers, Ireland could afford to paper over the cracks. Meanwhile, American tech and pharma giants have flourished. Apple, Microsoft, Pfizer and others have routed billions through Ireland, to the delight of shareholders and pension funds. If Trump moves to close loopholes or impose tariffs, these are the interests he'll have to console ahead of the midterms. The losers, predictably, are the American workers left behind by the long, slow flight of industry and tax revenue. Worse off still are the countries quietly drained by Ireland's magic act. The sums involved are vast. The structures that move them are so complex they can feel impossibly abstract. But the consequences are not. According to modelling by the Universities of St Andrews and Leicester, this tax loss has deprived more than 100,000 children of school attendance and some 1.1 million people of access to basic sanitation. Quibble with the methods if you like, but the core truth is hard to deny: when profits are rerouted, people are short-changed. Not that Dublin seems overly troubled. Only last month, Ireland's Taoiseach declared: 'Ireland earns its living from an open and fair approach to world trade.' The most pious nations often turn out to be the most artful. Ireland rarely misses a chance to sermonise on Gaza, climate justice, or whichever cause currently allows it to cast itself as Europe's moral compass. But as La Rochefoucauld noted, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. And by that measure, Ireland has paid handsomely.
BreakingNews.ie
21 hours ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Principal says sudden deportation of two pupils felt like a death in Dublin school
A principal at a Dublin primary school which lost two of its young pupils earlier this week after they were picked up by immigration officers for deportation said that their sudden departure felt like a death to their classmates. Thirty five people, including five children, were deported on a flight from Dublin to Lagos, Nigeria on Wednesday night. Advertisement Gardaí from the National Immigration Bureau carried out the operation of removing individuals from the State. The children involved were deported as part of family groups. Principal of St James Primary School in Dublin 8, Ciarán Cronin, told Newstalk that two of the boys who were deported had been in his school for three years. 'In 2022 we enrolled 32 children that were living in the Red Cow Hotel. We're on the Luas line, there's no school based out there, so we thought it would be a good fit. 'They all joined our school on a Tuesday, and they were just the most fantastic addition to our school.' Advertisement 'Visibly distressed' Mr Cronin said that while some of this original group of children had since been moved to different place across the country, there are still about 14 children enrolled at his school. He said that those children came to school in a 'visibly distressed' state on Wednesday. 'They were so upset – shaking, there were tears; and when we were asking them what happened, they told us that two of the boys that are in second class and sixth class, they'd been taken away in a minivan with all their stuff to go to the airport to be deported. 'We were just flummoxed by it, how do you explain that to children?' Advertisement Mr Cronin said that he was aware that the parents of the boys had entered the deportation process. He knew that the father of the youngsters had already been arrested pending his deportation. However, Mr Cronin was of the belief that their mother had an appointment with immigration services next month. This won't leave children for the rest of their lives, that have witnessed that, that have seen that – they're going to be scarred for life from this. Mr Cronin said he wasn't commenting on deportation laws as such. However, he feels that the way children are treated in the process should be given the 'utmost priority". 'That that things are done in a respectful; a trauma-informed way. Advertisement 'This won't leave children for the rest of their lives, that have witnessed that, that have seen that – they're going to be scarred for life from this.' Mr Cronin said there is 'such a sombre mood about the school' following what unfolded on Wednesday. It's as if someone's passed away. 'It's as if someone's passed away,' he added. Meanwhile, Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan told RTÉ's News at One earlier this week that persons on the flight to Nigeria were served with a deportation order and did not comply with it so a 'consequence' was needed. 'People need to know if they are served with a deportation order, it has meaning, and the meaning is that you are not entitled to stay in Ireland. "If it is the case that you're not permitted to stay — whether you have overstayed your work visa or haven't been granted asylum — there must be a consequence.' He added that gardaí, Department of Justice staff and prison officers had carried out a 'difficult and challenging job". The 21 men, nine women and five children departed on a chartered flight which left Dublin airport on Wednesday evening for Lagos.
