A former fireman who cut a carpenter's left hand off with a samurai sword in a crowded Dublin pub has been sentenced to nine years in prison by Judge Katherine Delahunt at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

A reformed drug addict who agreed to transport €1.6m worth of heroin for €400 because he "needed a few quid" has been remanded in custody pending sentence by Judge Katherine Delahunt.

A consultant psychiatrist has told a jury that after a patient stabbed him in the abdomen with a four inch knife he could smell gut contents and saw that the blade was "smeared right up to the hilt".

A 76-year-old man has pleaded guilty to raping his nine-year-old granddaughter in a Wexford town in 1994.

A Chinese national spent half an hour in the Royal Canal on a freezing winter night after being pushed down a steep incline into the water by three teenage thugs who had attempted to rob him.

A drug addict who broke into the home of a 96-year-old man and "savagely" attacked him has been given an eight-year sentence by Judge Donagh McDonagh at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Two men involved in possession of more than €4m worth of drugs found in a farmyard in Clonee, Co Meath have been jailed for eight years each by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

A High Court judge has said during a manslaughter sentencing that he has been "haunted by the conditions of the cruelly-named Fatima Mansions" during the course of the trial which was heard at the Central Criminal Court last February.

A man who fired a shotgun blast into the rear window of a former RTE's Treasure Island contestant's car because he wrongly believed he was having an affair with his partner has been jailed for three years by Judge Desmond Hogan.

A media lecturer who stabbed a love rival in the face and neck with a wine glass has what Judge Desmond Hogan called the dark cloud of a custodial sentence looming over her.

A Trinity College student who dropped out and operated a 'rickshaw' has been jailed for two years by Judge Des Hogan for having cocaine and 'ecstasy' in his flat three days after gardai seized quantities of the drugs from him.