A woman convicted of selling cigarettes and fireworks on the streets of Dublin was yesterday banned from the city centre for the next three years.
After the court hearing a distressed Ms Tracey Slattery (23) said the bond she had signed meant she would have to stay indoors for the next three years.
"I live in the centre of Dublin. I won't be able to go out if I have to stay away from all the streets named in the bond.
"It's ridiculous, a terrible sentence, a disgrace. All I did was sell tobacco."
Ms Slattery, of Coleraine Street, Dublin, spent the last week in Mountjoy women's prison because she had refused to sign the bond binding her to the peace and banning her from several named streets.
At Dublin District Court yesterday Judge Finn fined her £2,000 and imposed a two-month suspended prison sentence on nine separate charges.
The judge asked her solicitor if she had had a change of heart since the previous week when she had refused to sign the bond and had, as a result, spent a week in prison.
The court heard that she had 27 previous convictions.