A bank official’s back garden grew to the size of a hockey pitch when a judge told her the land she had looked after for 12 years was now hers.

Punters winning big in casinos have no protection in law if operators fail to pay out, according to a judge who dismissed one man’s claim to thousands of euro based on laws dating back to 1956.

IT is an indication of how very seriously we take our wishful thinking that two of the enterprises that enjoy the opportunities offered by the internet more than nearly any other businesses are pornography and gambling.

A court has heard a mother of two wet herself with fear when an armed Garda response unit burst into her home and handcuffed her and her naked partner on their bedroom floor.

A garda, who entered a low-rise block of flats after seeing a partly-open window, had committed “a significant trespass” into a one-room studio where a man and his partner were asleep in bed, a judge ruled yesterday.

A civil servant in the Department of Justice has told a judge that gardaí who broke into his Dublin flat five years ago searched his belongings and said to him: “We are searching for bombs, bullets, and guns.”

A man who used a stolen digger to smash an ATM containing over €124,000 out of a bank wall has been sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.

A terrified young woman had to pretend to her boyfriend that she was pregnant to stop him from strangling her.

THE teenager whose body was found in a field in Galway, after he perished to death, will be laid to rest tomorrow.

A Czech national who has been held in custody for almost one year on a rape charge was found not guilty by a jury which delivered its verdict after some 30 minutes deliberation following a nine-day trial.

A 23-year-old Czech national has denied in evidence at the Central Criminal Court that he raped a Galway woman who had run up to him on the street and kissed him while he walked home.

A garda sergeant has revealed she did not take the phone belonging to a Galway woman who alleges she was raped by a Czech national, because she assumed it would have no evidential value.

The Galway woman who alleges she was raped by a Czech national has contradicted a claim in her original garda statement that her trousers were around her knees when she ran towards a friend afterwards.

The Galway woman who alleges she was raped by a Czech national has denied defence claims that she had been "caught-out" in her evidence through mobile phone records and timings on CCTV footage.

A Roscommon man who raped a baby-sitter over two decades ago has been jailed for 11 years.

A Roscommon man has been convicted of raping a babysitter more than two decades ago.

The Roscommon man accused of raping a babysitter over two decades ago has denied her allegations in evidence on day-four of his trial at the Central Criminal Court.

A former member of the Slovakian police force who raped a female relative in his Sligo home last year has been jailed for eight years by Mr Justice Eamon de Valera at the Central Criminal Court.