Judge Patrick McCartan strongly criticised lack of funding for the Probation and Welfare Service when he jailed a paedophile for three years at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
The judge said he was "deeply disturbed" that it had taken nine months to get a probation report on the man, who he had released temporarily in March "after waiting in exasperation" for it.
He said society could have suffered "a grave injustice" if he had decided to finalise the case without the report, which indicated there was a very high risk of the man reoffending.
The Judge said he did not realise just how serious the case was until he read the probation report when it finally arrived. He now realised from the report that the man had no intention of changing his ways and had little insight into the harm he had caused.
He asked Ms Melanie Greally, prosecuting, to tell the relevant authorities that a "miscarriage of justice" could have occurred because of understaffing in the probation services.
He made it clear that he was criticising the lack of funding for the probation services and not the services themselves, which were now so overstretched they were unable to meet their commitments to the courts.
Judge McCartan jailed the man for three years for a series of sexual assaults on young girls. He added a nine-month consecutive sentence after hearing that he had physically assaulted one of the girls when she tried to contact gardai.