A mother of four broke down in tears yesterday after a judge ruled that a deluge of hate mail to her had come from the home of a one-time close friend.

A senior judge said yesterday that he believes “bouncy castles were created by lawyers and supervised by barristers”.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter has confirmed he is to appoint a small cadre of specialist judges to speed up the insolvency applications that are due to come before the courts next year.

The head of an engineering company told a Fianna Fáil TD over the phone that a man on whose behalf he was making representations about a redundancy was “a Sinn Féin f***er, sympathiser and troublesome employee,” a court heard today.

RTÉ’S crime correspondent Paul Reynolds has been awarded €60,000 in damages after winning a libel action against the head of the Garda Representative Association, PJ Stone, and the GRA’s official magazine, Garda Review.