TD: Murderer Peter Whelan should be locked up 'until 2025 at the earliest'

A TD has assured the grieving family of murdered Cork student Nichola Sweeney that their daughter's killer should remain locked up “until 2025 at the earliest” - once a new act takes force before the killer's parole hearing.

Jim O’Callaghan, Fianna Fáil's spokesman on Justice, said the Parole Act 2019 dictates that anyone given a life sentence must serve at least 12 years. He is now urging Justice Minister Charles Flanagan to quickly commence the act so it is in force before Peter Whelan's parole hearing next year.

Deputy O'Callaghan said: “It's very upsetting to see families suffering like that. But a new law is now in place that will keep Peter Whelan in jail until 2025 at the earliest once it has been commenced before his parole hearing.

The courts thought it was necessary to give him consecutive sentences due to the horrendous nature of his crimes. So we cannot now allow the system to merge those sentences together.

Nichola Sweeney, 20, was murdered in her bedroom in April 2002 by her neighbour, Peter Whelan, who was not known to her.

He stabbed her friend, Sinéad O'Leary, then 19, so viciously in the same attack in Rochestown that he broke a knife in her body. Whelan was sentenced to 15 years for Ms O'Leary's attempted murder and to life for Ms Sweeney's murder. The sentences were to run consecutively.

Nichola Sweeney.

But to the grieving families' horror, Whelan has been released for day trips to Cork under escort after serving just six years for Nichola's murder. And the families fear that these escorted day releases will help the killer build a favourable case for early release at his parole hearing, scheduled for November, 2020.

But Deputy O'Callaghan said that the new act, which will be applied retrospectively, is designed to protect the Sweeney and O'Leary families: “Section 24 (10) provides that where a person has received a life sentence and another sentence to run consecutively, the person shall only be eligible to apply for parole once he has served 12 years of his life sentence.

"Whelan is only six years into the life sentence he is serving for the murder of Nichola Sweeney so if the provisions of the Act are commenced it would limit his ability to apply for parole for at least another six years."