The father of a woman found strangled in her car four years ago told a jury yesterday her marriage reached "rock bottom" after her husband lost his job.
Geraldine Diver's husband, John, denies murdering his wife at his trial in the Central Criminal Court.
Mr Liam Grimes said "things changed" after Mr Diver lost his job in the Coombe women's hospital in November 1995. He alleged that John Diver "was sacked", adding: "Well, he was suspended." When he lost his job, relations between John and Geraldine "went down to rock bottom", he said.
Mr Diver "was a man who always thought that everything he said was right and everything everyone else said was wrong".
John Diver (60) has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his wife (42), who was found strangled in her car outside Buckley's builders' providers on Robinhood Road, Clondalkin, Dublin, on December 2nd, 1996.
Her father, Mr Grimes, said that eight weeks before Geraldine's death he discussed the state of the marriage with John Diver.
"Well, I knew what was going on, and the way Geraldine felt", he told prosecuting counsel Mr Edward Comyn SC. "He really had disgraced her by losing his job. She had to go into the Coombe hospital, day in, day out, and face everybody - he never took that into consideration."
When he spoke to him about "the way he was behaving", Mr Diver started roaring and shouting. "I said the way you are going on in that house will have to change because your marriage is on the rocks."
He said that at the time Mr Diver was getting on with his children, "but it was all baby talk to them".
Mr Grimes said he never knew Geraldine was having an affair with an employee in the local supermarket in Walkinstown. He never asked her and she never told him, he said.
From the time he spoke to the accused about the marriage to the time of Geraldine's death, Mr Diver never sat at the table for a meal with him again.
Mr Grimes also told the court that from the time the accused lost his job in November 1995 until Geraldine was killed, he gave her £250 a month to help with their mortgage.
In February or March 1996, Geraldine came to him and said: "Dad, you always said you'd look after me." She asked him for £10,000, and he gave it to her.
Mr Grimes agreed he had told gardai that he blamed John Diver 75 per cent for the problems in their marriage and Geraldine 25 per cent.
Asked why he was assigning 25 per cent of the blame to his daughter, he said: "Well, the way I looked at it there was two of them, husband and wife, and the way John was going on from the time he lost his job, she thought, OK, she would have a go at him and he would have a go at her."
Mr Grimes agreed with Mr Barry White, defending, that in fact the Coombe wished to dismiss John Diver, but after he went through an appeals process, a rights commissioner criticised another employee and instructed that John Diver should be reinstated. On the advice of a trade union official, Mr Diver then sought early retirement, and a lump sum of £20,000 was agreed, along with a monthly pension.
On the day Geraldine was killed, Mr Grimes saw a postman arrive with a registered letter for the accused man. This contained the £20,000 redundancy payment. On the same day John Diver put the cheque not into the couple's joint account but into his own account in the TSB.
Mr White said there was a reason for that, which was that Geraldine was instigating family law proceedings against her husband.
Mr Grimes said he knew that Geraldine was thinking of bringing judicial separation proceedings, and that she had been to a solicitor and had advised her husband to do the same.
He agreed with Mr White that he did not like the draft separation agreement Geraldine's solicitor drew up.
"I said she was giving too much away; she was giving the house, after all she spent doing it up and renovating it," he said. "I said go over and give John £10,000, and you stay in the house, and Geraldine said he will never agree to that."
The trial continues today before Mr Justice Smith and the jury.