A round-up of other stories in brief...
Credit union account ‘murky’
A Balbriggan resident who attempted to fraudulently withdraw €7,000 from a Swords Credit Union account after a suspicious lodgement was made has been given a suspended sentence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Olubuckolo Kilani (41), of Hamlet Avenue, pleaded guilty to attempting to make a gain or cause a loss by deception at the credit union on July 16th, 2007. The Nigerian mother of two has no previous convictions.
Judge Martin Nolan said the details of the account were “murky” and he accepted that Kilani was making the withdrawal after being persuaded by “interested parties”. He imposed a two-year suspended sentence.
Legality of sentence queried
The Supreme Court has been asked to decide whether the Court of Criminal Appeal is entitled to review an entire sentence where the DPP had argued suspension of part of the sentence, not the sentence itself, was “unduly lenient”.
The point of law arose in the case of a Cork man, Rory Lernihan, whose effective prison term of a maximum one and a half years was increased by the appeal court to seven years.
Lernihan, Ashmount Court, Mayfield, Cork, was initially jailed in 2006 for four years on drugs charges, with two and a half years suspended.
In seeking a review of sentence, the DPP described the four year sentence as “lenient” and the suspended part as “unduly lenient”.
Lawyers for Lernihan then asked the appeal court to refer to the Supreme Court a point of law relating to whether the appeal court had jurisdiction to do that.
Bank worker settles claim
A bank supervisor has settled her High Court action against Bank of Ireland for damages for post-traumatic stress allegedly suffered as a result of a raid at its foreign exchange branch at Dublin airport.
Tracy Costello (36), of Leixlip Park, Leixlip, Co Kildare, who now works with Allied Irish Banks having resigned from BoI in 2000, claimed BoI failed to provide safe or adequate supports after the raid.
After out-of-court talks yesterday the matter was settled on consent.
Funeral of architect of UCD's Belfield
The funeral of the architect best known for designing UCD’s Belfield campus is to take place this morning.
Polish-born Andrzej Wejchert first came to Ireland in 1964 aged 27. After graduation from Warsaw Polytechnic, he won the open competition to design the Belfield campus. He won an RIAI Gold Medal for his design, which included the sculptural concrete water tower and the formal lake.
On the strength of this success he set up a practice in Dublin with his wife Danuta called A+D Wejchert and Partners.
The firm’s projects included Ballincollig Community School, Cork, and the Helix arts centre at DCU.
The Wejcherts designed their own house on Church Road, Killiney, in 1982, putting solar panels on its roof. Andrzej Wejchert died at his home in Killiney on Tuesday. He is survived by his wife Danuta, his architect daughter Agnieszka, his son Michael, who is a structural engineer, as well as his three grandchildren Sasha, Rebecca and Jude.
His funeral takes place after 10am Mass today in St Stephen’s Church, Killiney, with burial at Shanganagh Cemetery.