A Tipperary man who admitted having sex with a teenage girl has been given an 18-month suspended sentence by Mr Justice Carney at the Central Criminal Court.
John Paul O'Brien (25), Father Matthew Street, Tipperary, pleaded guilty to having unlawful carnal knowledge of the 16-year- old schoolgirl on July 10th, 1999, in the town.
Garda Ann Kissane told Mr John Walsh (with Mr Paddy McCarthy SC), prosecuting, that the couple met after both had been drinking with their own friends.
Garda Kissane agreed with O'Brien's defence counsel that both had taken a lot of drink that night and that after sexual intercourse in a car-park, O'Brien apologised to her.
Mr Justice Carney noted that Prof Tom O'Malley had indicated in his discussion of unlawful carnal knowledge cases in his textbook on Irish law that they were seldom prosecuted.
It was proposed that they should generally be dealt with non-custodially in the absence of aggravating matters such as a grave disparity of ages. He said O'Brien had been originally charged with rape, but the prosecution had accepted a plea to an offence totally different in character.
He said that O'Brien was insistent on trying to have sexual intercourse with the girl, but all suggestions of force being used were out of the case.