A 46-year-old woman has been sentenced to 10 months imprisonment for two counts of driving without insurance.
Nicola Masterson of Ranaghan, Collinstown pleaded guilty to two charges of driving without insurance and of theft of petrol which she failed to pay for at a filling station. The sentences were suspended.
Ms Patricia Cronin said her client no longer had a car and no longer had access to cars, when Judge Neilan expressed his concern that Ms Masterson “persists in ignoring the issues before the court”.
The judge said she had treated previous orders of the court with contempt by getting behind the wheel of a car.
“Every time she’s given a chance, she’s back in court with a new offence,” he said.
Inspector Kieran Keyes said he shared the court’s concerns that she had been driving with no insurance and no driving licence and that someone could be seriously or fatally injured.
Ms Cronin said her client had come to no further Garda attention of late and her condition had stabilised following her admission to St Loman’s hospital as an inpatient and a change in her medication.
However, the judge pointed out that Ms Masterson in the past seven years had “arbitrarily decided over the years that she’s not going to take her medication and regresses into the state she was in and her difficulties were clearly manifest”.
He said she may well decide to stop again and would retreat and regress into the same state of mind. This would lead to further offences which brought her to court in circumstances that were very difficult for everyone, but for the Gardaí in particular.
He suspended the 10 month sentence until February for an updated psychiatric report and gave gardaí liberty to re-enter the case if she comes to their attention in the meantime.
