Translator request irks judge

A JUDGE has hit out at the fact that a 46-year-old Lithuanian man has lived and worked in Ireland for 20 years yet needed a translator in court at the expense of the taxpayer. The man was sent forward for trial at Trim Circuit Court on a charge of alleged assault of a woman causing her harm, and with threatening to kill or maim her.

Judge Miriam Walsh asked him if he had family in Ireland and he said a wife and daughter.

Asked what he worked at he said, through the translator, packing fruit and potatoes. Asked if he had ever applied for social welfare and filled in a form he said his daughter completed these for him.

The judge said: "He is 20 years in this country and needs a translator. This is becoming such a joke. People are lying on hospital trolleys with Covid, some of them in cold corridors, and the hospital budgets are running out."

She sent the accused forward for trial at the circuit court next month.