THERE have been at least two breaches of a warring couple’s sworn undertakings given before the court in relation to the use of an immersion switch in the family home, a court has heard.
In the case, the couple each have temporary protection orders against one another, and the husband last month received a two-month suspended prison term arising from a shower row between the couple on the morning of a child’s Confirmation last May.
After finding the County Clare man guilty of a breach of the protection order in the criminal district court, Judge Adrian Harris ordered the man not to enter his wife’s bedroom as part of the conditions attached to the suspended prison term.
The court heard that the couple are separated but continue to live with their children in the family home.
Now, at the Family Law Court, Limerick-based solicitor for the husband, Lorraine O’Callaghan Daly, told Judge Alec Gabbett that “the immersion switch that is to be left turned on has been turned off on at least two occasions when my client goes home”, in breach of the undertakings previously provided in court.
After being first told of the undertaking involving the house immersion switch at the Family Law Court last November, Judge Gabbett then remarked: “It is very 1950s, isn’t it?”.
Ms O’Callaghan Daly has now told Judge Gabbett that the mother told one of the children on a recent morning before school: “Everything is going to be great. I am going to be the CEO and the president of everything. I am taking over this house and us in it. It is about time a woman took over everything.”
“Judge, that is how she is speaking to the children,” Ms O’Callaghan Daly said.
Ms O’Callaghan Daly said that “there are ongoing difficulties in the home”, and that her client has received a suspended two-month prison term for the protection order breach.
Ms O’Callaghan Daly asked Judge Gabbett if he would allow her client to record his interactions with his ex-wife in the house “from a safety point of view”.
She said that her client gave an undertaking not to record “and that is proving extremely difficult in that the ex-wife is talking to him, trying to create difficult situations in the home, and she is accusing him of doing different things in the home which are not true”.
Judge Gabbett said that it would not be appropriate for the man to be recording in the house, commenting that he has a two-month suspended sentence hanging over him.
“There comes a time when people are going to have to move out and maybe we have reached that point,” the judge said.
Ms O’Callaghan Daly said that the court had directed that the two complete a co-parenting course.
“My client has completed it and his ex-wife says that she is starting the course today,” she told the court.
Ms O’Callaghan Daly said that the woman had failed to turn up to court and Judge Gabbett adjourned the case to next month to allow her to attend.
At the hearing of the protection order breach last month, the woman told the court in evidence: “All through the separation it has been an absolute nightmare, I have been through hell, absolute hell for the last 18 months. All I wanted to do was end the marriage and move on with my life.”
“I am only in the house because I want to raise the children in their own home, in their beds where they are safe, in their community with their friends. I just want this marriage over – I never wanted to be here.”
