Woman pleads guilty to manslaughter of partner in Co Dublin
Olesja Hertova of Hastings Lawn, Balbriggan was before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Monday where she was arraigned on the single count of unlawfully killing James Ryan (61).
She started crying when the charge was put to her, and she pleaded guilty to his manslaughter on August 11th, 2024 at Hastings Lawn.
Her barrister, Bernard Condon SC, explained to the court that the deceased was her husband, and he asked for the earliest sentence date available.
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Judge Orla Crowe remanded her in custody for sentencing on July 3rd.
Mr Ryan, a father of four, grandfather and former member of the Defence Forces, suffered from Parkinson's disease and COPD and died a day after he was injured on August 10th, a previous hearing was told.
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Irish Times
6 hours ago
- Irish Times
Thirty two children from the West Bank watched the All-Ireland in Jordan. This wasn't the plan
The cheering coming from a hotel room in Amman last Sunday sprang from an astonishing source. Gathered in front of a big screen, 32 Palestinian children from the West Bank were watching the All-Ireland final on the GAAGO streaming service. Some were sporting Tipperary jerseys, a gift from a donor. After the final whistle, one of the boys produced a length of string and fashioned it into a clothes line over the bath upon which he hung his precious Gaelic jersey to dry after washing it. Such resourcefulness is second nature to a child who has lived all his life in a refugee camp; as have his parents and his grandparents. The children – avid hurlers and camogie players aged from nine to 16 – should have been in Ireland, but they and 14 adult mentors were refused visas by the Department of Justice . 'But Ireland loves us,' they responded, confused, when the tour organisers, GAA Palestine, told them their visit to 152 waiting host families had to be cancelled . When Mohammed cannot come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed. A group of volunteers flew from Ireland to Jordan last Friday to give the children an alternative holiday there. One teenager failed to make it across the border from the West Bank because his requisite school certificate had burned to ashes when the Israel Defense Forces attacked his camp. On the day the other 32 left their homes in Ramallah and the Tulkarm, Jenin and Am'ari camps, soldiers shot a 13-year-old boy dead. Amr Ali Qabha had unwittingly walked down a road in Jenin where soldiers were present during violent raids by Israeli settlers. When he rounded a bend and saw them, Amr turned to go back. They shot him seven times – in the neck, abdomen, back, groin and right thigh. As he lay dying, the soldiers prevented an ambulance from going to his aid. READ MORE 'But Ireland loves us,' the children said. That is true, the GAA Palestine volunteers reassured them and showed them videos on their phones of last Saturday's solidarity protests when tens of thousands of people took to the streets of this country. These children need tender loving care. They've lost parents. They have family members in prisons, in detention with no charges. They are refugees all their lives. They are repeatedly displaced. They see the crops being burned, the sheep being killed. They need to be able to spend time without a gun in their face — Volunteer Claire Liddy 'Let them come,' the marchers had chanted. 'They say that for us?' wondered the children. They are not the only ones who are confused by the contradiction between Ireland's policy of solidarity on the Occupied Territories and how it treats the victim-occupants. The Government, admirably, has withstood orchestrated international opprobrium for its decision to officially recognise Palestinian statehood, which culminated in Israel shutting its embassy in Dublin. The Occupied Territories Bill currently before the Oireachtas has elicited accusations of anti-Semitism and warnings of ruination for the Irish economy. The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee , a Southern Baptist pastor and former Fox News talkshow host, dredged the muck of drunken-Paddies stereotypes, unapologetic for his own racism. [ Heartbreak as Palestinian GAA players are refused visas to visit Ireland Opens in new window ] To its credit, the Oireachtas appears resolved to outlaw trade with illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Injecting steel into that resolve is the knowledge that since last January and up until last week, according to United Nations agency OCHA , 162 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. At least 32 of the dead were children. The killings and illegal seizures of Palestinian homes and farms, with the assistance of Israeli soldiers, have been a fact of life throughout the lives of the children watching Tipperary beat Cork last Sunday. As it becomes ever more obvious that Israel is trying to kill as many Gazans as it can while it still can with complicit way-leave by the US, Germany and the EU, Micheál Martin's condemnations have become more forthright and fearless. Yet Ireland's defence of Palestinians' freedom is a strange kind of love. GAA Palestine applied in February for the summer tour visas. It was only at the eleventh hour this month that the Department of Justice notified the organisation the visas were being refused, citing a failure to produce sufficient documents. Stephen Redmond, GAA Palestine's chairman who is currently in Jordan, countered that all required documentations had been submitted; in fact, more than ever before for past tours. 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The common factor between what Israel is doing in Gaza and in the West Bank is an international crime called ethnic cleansing. The methods may differ – aerial bombardment, mass killings and man-made famine in Gaza; systemic discrimination, forced displacement and murders in the West Bank – but they belong to the same grand plan to colonise the Palestinian territories.
RTÉ News
15 hours ago
- RTÉ News
WRC finds Fair City photographer was not a freelancer
RTÉ has failed to have employment rights claims by the former on-set photographer for Fair City thrown out, after the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) ruled, for the first time, that a supposed freelancer at the national broadcaster was actually an employee. The statutory complaints were brought by photographer, Beta Bajgart, who was previously the subject of commentary at the Public Accounts Committee when it emerged the national broadcaster was paying €60,000 per year for promotional images of the Dublin-based soap opera. Ms Bajgart's case against RTÉ under the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003, the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, the Terms of Employment (Information) Act 1994 and the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 will now proceed to a full hearing, following a preliminary ruling today. It is the first WRC case where the principles of a major Supreme Court ruling in 2023 on the distinction between employees and contractors have been applied to the position of a worker at RTÉ. The alleged misclassification of media workers as freelance contractors by RTÉ is a major legacy issue at the national broadcaster. She claims her job as a photographer on the set of RTÉ's flagship soap opera was terminated without notice on 15 December 2023. The broadcaster's lawyers had argued Ms Bajgart was not an employee, but a freelance contractor - giving the employment tribunal "no jurisdiction" her complaints. Adjudication officer Catherine Byrne noted that Ms Bajgart suffered "negative commentary" in September 2023 after attention was drawn to Ms Bajgart's role following a hearing of the Oireachtas Public Accounts committee, which had been scrutinising RTÉ's finances. In the wake of the publicity, Ms Bajgart's solicitors wrote to RTÉ asserting that she had acquired a contract of indefinite duration and was an employee, the tribunal noted. The broadcaster's director of human resources replied that RTÉ's relationship with the photographer was "not an employment relationship" but that she was "a supplier of services". Ms Bajgart was first engaged for the work as an independent contractor for a year starting in June 2011 at €750 a week. There were repeated renewals of the contract and Ms Bajgart won tender competitions in 2017 and 2019, with the rate for the job rising to €980 a week over that period, the tribunal noted. However, Ms Bajgart did not apply when the work was put out to tender again in September 2023, and ultimately ceased working on the Fair City set on 15 December 2023, when the tender process was readvertised, the adjudicator noted. Ms Bajgart gave evidence that she was interviewed for the job in 2011 and "got the contract", with "no discussion about the legal implications". She explained that she set the rate for the job based on her previous work for another production, Off the Rails. Addressing a gap in her contracts between 14 October 2018 and 21 January 2019, Ms Bajgart said she "simply continued to work" and got paid. Her barrister, Michael O'Doherty BL, who appeared instructed by Conor McCrave of Setanta Solicitors, asked if she had "consented to doing the job as an independent contractor. Ms Bajgart replied: "I wanted the job," and added that it was "never offered" to her as a position of employment. Under cross-examination from RTÉ's solicitor, Louise O'Byrne of Arthur Cox, asked Ms Bajgart whether she had done other work while engaged for Fair City. Ms Bajgart said she ran her freelance business around the Fair City shot list and that it was difficult to look for clients because she never knew when she was due on set. Ms O'Byrne also referred to a letter sent by the complainant to the Irish Times and the Irish Independent in September 2023 following remarks by Fine Gael senator Micheál Carrigy about Ms Bajgart's, in which the complainant had stated: "The photographer on RTÉ's Fair City is an independent contractor." Ms O'Byrne argued this showed the claimant "did not consider herself as an employee" of RTÉ. Mr O'Doherty said she had described herself as an independent contractor "because she did not want to upset her employer and potentially lose her job by publicly describing herself as an employee". Adjudication officer Catherine Byrne wrote that the "day-to-day reality" of Ms Bajgart's working relationship with RTÉ was "not consistent with how she was described in her contract as 'a supplier' and 'not an employee'". Ms Byrne noted that Ms Bajgart had been working 20 hours a week, part-time, for 12 years on "a series of fixed-term contracts" in a role which "contributes to the promotion and success" of Fair City. The worker had had a desk on set, "no discretion" about her level of attendance there, and could only work elsewhere three or four hours a week, and performed the work personally 95% of the time, Ms Byrne said. There were limits to Ms Bajgart's "artistic independence" and her freedom to alter her way of working in a bid to increase her earnings, with a fixed weekly rate being paid, Ms Byrne added. Ms Byrne also noted that during a period between October 2018 and January 2019, when there was no contract in place, Ms Bajgart "continued to turn up for work" and got her normal weekly rate "without any dispute". "This continuity of employment, in the absence of a contract, is indicative of a relationship of interdependence and trust, and not that of a commercial agreement," Ms Byrne wrote. "The authors of the agreements… may have genuinely believed that the working relationship with [Ms Bajgart] was that of an independent contractor, at least in the early years," she wrote. "However, it seems to me that the sustained nature of her job and the sole reliance by the respondent on the complainant to do the work, means that the legal basis of the agreement evolved from a supplier's agreement to that of an employee," she added. Ms Byrne wrote that her investigation of Ms Bajgart's status was clouded by the fact the photographer appeared to have "acquiesced" to being classified as self-employed for years - and even described herself as an independent contractor in open letters to two newspapers in 2023. "This acquiescence has no bearing on my conclusion that her relationship with the respondent was that of an employee," the adjudicator wrote.
Irish Independent
17 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Landmark ruling against RTÉ as WRC tribunal finds Fair City photographer was not a freelancer
RTÉ has failed to have employment rights claims by the former on-set photographer for Fair City thrown out, after the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) ruled, for the first time, that a supposed freelancer at the national broadcaster was actually an employee. The statutory complaints were brought by photographer, Beta Bajgart, who was previously the subject of commentary at the Public Accounts Committee when it emerged the national broadcaster was paying €60,000 per year for promotional images of the Dublin-based soap opera.
