An appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) over an “unduly lenient” suspended sentence imposed on former Army private Cathal Crotty for a brutal physical assault on a young woman is among several high-profile cases due before the courts in the new law term that begins on Monday.
The suspension of the entirety of a three-year sentence for the assault on Natasha O’Brien in Limerick city in 2022 prompted a public and political outcry and the DPP’s appeal will be heard by a three-judge Court of Appeal on January 23rd.
Crotty, from Ardnacrusha, Co Limerick, was aged 22 when he beat Ms O’Brien (24) unconscious on the street after she asked him to stop shouting homophobic abuse at passersby.
In June 2023, Judge Tom O’Donnell, sitting at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court, imposed a suspended three-year term on Crotty and ordered him to pay €3,000 compensation to Ms O’Brien.
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The Court of Appeal will on February 18th hear an appeal by former soldier Lisa Smith against her conviction by the non-jury Special Criminal Court for membership of the terrorist group, Islamic State (Isis).
In 2022, Smith (42), a mother of one from Dundalk, Co Louth, became the first person to be convicted in an Irish court of a terrorist offence committed abroad when the non-jury Special Criminal Court (SCC) found she had joined Isis when she travelled to Syria in 2015.
Smith denied membership of Isis between October 28th, 2015, and December 1st, 2019. The SCC accepted her role with Isis was “wholly passive” but said the evidence established she had travelled to Syria “with knowledge of what Islamic State stood for, of its methods and its brutal activities” and this was “an overt expression of support for that organisation”.
Last year, Smith lost her appeal against the severity of the 15-month sentence imposed on foot of her conviction.
In the Central Criminal Court, a man and a woman will go on trial on Monday accused of murdering a man whose body was found off the Sliabh Liag cliffs in Co Donegal.
Alan Vial (38), with an address at Drumanoo Head, Killybegs, Co Donegal, and Nikita Burns (22), of Bundoran Westend Accommodation, Westend Magheracar, Bundoran, Co Donegal, are accused of murdering Robert Wilkin at a place unknown within the State on June 25th, 2023.
The body of Mr Wilkin, aged in his 60s and originally from Co Tyrone, was found floating in waters off Sliabh Liag cliffs following an extensive search. The case is expected to last four weeks.
Separately, eight men charged in relation to the largest seizure of drugs in the history of the State after a cargo ship was detained off the southeast coast are due to go on trial at the SCC this week.
About 2¼ tonnes of cocaine, with an estimated value of more than €157 million was seized from the Panamanian-registered large bulk carrier MV Matthew in Irish waters in September 2023. After Army Rangers secured the vessel, members of the Naval Service, Garda National Drugs & Organised Crime Bureau and Revenue were transferred to the ship and it was escorted into port.
The Supreme Court is due to hear a significant appeal by An Bord Pleanála on January 16th arising from a decision involving its former deputy chairman, Paul Hyde.
The board has appealed against a judgment by the Court of Appeal that the public interest in systemic issues about the board’s operation over a number of years constituted “good and sufficient” reason to extend time to bring a judicial review challenge.
The High Court had refused to extend time for Peter and Doreen Thomson to challenge the board’s June 2021 permission to Eircom Ltd for erection of a telecommunications mast near their home in Kells, Co Kilkenny. Mr Hyde was one of two board members who granted the permission.
The Thomsons had contemplated seeking judicial review in 2021 but decided against that. Having later learned that the Minister for Housing had directed an investigation following the raising of concerns about the decision-making impartiality of Mr Hyde on foot of his involvement with a property company, the Thomsons applied in November 2022 for judicial review of the mast permission decision.
The High Court held there were not “good and sufficient” reasons to extend the time. It noted that the applicants had had concerns in May 2022 but went to the media, rather than the court, about those.
A majority Court of Appeal overturned the High Court decision, ruling that the public interest in permitting a bias allegation against Mr Hyde to be ventilated outweighed all other factors and thus good and sufficient reasons existed to extend time for judicial review.
The Supreme Court later agreed to hear the board’s appeal over the Court of Appeal decision after determining the case raised matters of general public importance about the consideration to be given to the public interest and to the strength of the case to be argued for an extension of time. These issues may arise in other cases and it is in the public interest to obtain further clarity, it said.
Back in the Court of Appeal, a long-awaited judgment on a separate appeal over a cycleway plan in Sandymount, Dublin 4, is expected to be given before this term ends on April 11th.
Dublin City Council appealed against a July 2021 High Court ruling in favour of local Independent Cllr Mannix Flynn and Sandymount resident Peter Carvill which the council says has enormous implications for the operations of a road authority.
The case involved a significant challenge to a provision of the Road Traffic Act 1991, as amended by the Public Transportation Regulation Act 2009, which allows councils to take steps to make roads and streets safer for cycling, public transport and pedestrians.
The trial of various cases relating to the Web Summit, the technology conference business, is listed to open in the High Court on March 18th. Due to last nine weeks, the litigation involves Paddy Cosgrave, chief executive, a co-founder and 81 per cent shareholder of the Web Summit, and two other co-founders, Daire Hickey and David Kelly, who respectively have shareholdings of 7 and 12 per cent in the firm.
The High Court’s planning and environment division, which has sought more judges, has fixed at least 30 cases for hearing this term, most involving challenges over housing and wind farm developments.
A significant action by two of the State’s largest developers, Cairn Homes and Glenveagh Properties against Wicklow County Council, is set for hearing on January 14th. The companies claim the new Wicklow County Development Plan is too restrictive and will mean a “significant reduction” in the number of new homes which can be built during the plan’s six-year duration.
The companies say the plan has “materially underestimated” Wicklow’s population growth, will reduce capacity for new builds in the county and affect the delivery of “much-needed social, affordable and private housing”.
The plan imposes a ceiling on the delivery of new homes in the county at 8,467, more than 45 per cent lower than the previous housing target, the companies claim.
A significant environmental case concerning the adequacy of the outgoing Government’s Climate Action Plan 2023 and the actions proposed under that is due to open on January 28th.
Friends of the Irish Environment has taken the case, arguing the Government has failed to sufficiently specify that its plan will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the State’s legally binding carbon budget.
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