A Dublin woman has pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to wilfully abandoning her four-month-old baby outside the Belgard Inn pub, Tallaght, Co Dublin.
Christopher Gaffney, a security man at the Belgard Inn, told Marie Torrens, prosecuting, that in April 2003, the woman (36) left the baby there after she was refused entry and the child's father, who was drinking in the pub at the time, would not come out to speak to her.
Mr Gaffney said he was told by the woman, before she drove off in a taxi, that the baby had been fed and changed recently and that there was "an extra feed and change" in a bag she had left with the child.
He took the baby into the off-licence and told the staff that it had been abandoned and to ring the gardaí. The staff then took the baby into the lounge and he left work as his shift had finished.
Mr Gaffney agreed with Paul Greene, defending, that at the woman's request, a barman had gone into the pub to try and get the father to come out.
The barman returned and told her that he was not there. Mr Gaffney accepted that he knew the father was on the premises at the time.
He further accepted that he had told gardaí that the woman replied: "I know he's in there," before trying again, unsuccessfully, to get into the pub and then leaving the baby in her chair beside him.
Although the baby was left in his immediate vicinity and the father was 10 yards away in the pub, it hadn't "dawned on him" that she wanted the father to "face up to his responsibilities".
Mr Gaffney did not accept a suggestion from defence counsel that he had "expressed a positive willingness to transfer the custody of the child to the father" and denied that he told the woman that he would keep "an eye on her" until the father came out.
He said he was not aware that the woman had previously been on trial in November 2004 and accepted that although he hadn't made any statement to gardaí until January 2005, he would have been available to do so, and would have been available to give evidence in the first trial.
Mr Gaffney accepted "it was possible" that the woman was not in any doubt that she had left her baby in his vicinity with an extra feed and change because she was "of the view that the father was on his way out to take care of her".
The trial continues before Judge Michael White and a jury.