' I've been in this court at least 250 times ... I've paid my dues to society, so let the State look after my children

The judge closed a file on her desk, shrugged her shoulders and raised her hands despairingly.

"What can I do?" Judge Angela Ní Chondúin said. "I would certainly keep the two of them in custody if I could."

The two children in court, who appeared before the judge just days earlier, were in court again because they were accused of breaching their bail conditions.

The 17-year-old girl was directed to stay away from a shopping centre in west Dublin and obey a curfew from 8 p.m. onwards.

The garda in court, however, said he saw her with a group of young people at the shopping centre after 8 p.m. and was allegedly threatening a security guard. The 14-year-old boy was directed to sign on at the local Garda station once a day, but the garda said he had failed to do so.

There were no places in either Oberstown or Trinity House for the boy, while the only option for the girl was in Mountjoy, the garda added.

Their father, wearing a patterned jumper and T-shirt, had been sitting down and clenching his rolled-up newspaper. But he suddenly stood up and interrupted the legal discussion.

"I'm sick of all this," he said angrily. "I'm suffering mentally. The boy wouldn't go. I can't start pulling him out the door. I never hit the children in my life. It's not the way I was brought up.

"I've been in this court at least 250 times. As I said the last day, I've paid my dues to society, so let the State look after them."

He also rejected Mountjoy as an option for his daughter, saying she was not on drugs but that the prison could change that.

The two children watched the spectacle wordlessly, the boy leaning forward in the box, the girl leaning back and scratching her head occasionally.

The judge quietly read through a report and looked up at the family's solicitor.

"I can't move one way or another," she said finally. The judge released them on bail and said she would see them back in the court next week.

The father motioned for his two children to come with him and walked briskly out of the courtroom.

Earlier, during another case, a 17-year-old Nigerian boy was brought into court, mumbling to himself, as if lost in his own dreamy world.

"Smoking weed is my right ... what have I done here? ... It's my right to get high," he muttered, motioning as if he had an imaginary spliff in his hand.

"I just wanna smoke ... mmmmmhhhh ... they have my passport," he said, not making eye-contact with anyone in the court.

His solicitor explained that an assessment found he was suffering from a drug-induced psychosis related to a form of cannabis.

He was due to attend the Mater Hospital for attention, but a doctor there insisted the patient was outside the hospital's catchment area.

"We now have the wonderful situation where he was arrested for two new public-order offences outside the Mater Hospital," his solicitor, Ms Sarah Molloy, said darkly.

The judge directed that he receive psychiatric attention and reappear before the court in the next week.

As she wrote out the report silently, the boy continued to talk indecipherably and lay his head down on the desk of the witness box.

He had to be tapped on the shoulder by gardaí when the case was concluded. He was led down to the cells, still muttering to himself, still immersed in his own unreal world.