Counsel said that Freer should have had been linked in with social services but this didn't happen until gardaí raided his home.

A DISTRICT judge yesterday described as “dispiriting” the way in which people under the influence of drugs were sometimes given priority in emergency departments ahead of victims of car accidents.

A chronic drug addict who forced his way into a family home and stabbed a man in front of his wife has been given a 12-year sentence for this offence as well as a spate of armed robberies and storing explosives for a criminal.