A 21-year-old man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for an attack on a journalist, during which she was stabbed through the neck with a kitchen knife.
Leszek Jarosz, with an address at The Mill Apartments, Weaver Square in Dublin 8, pleaded guilty to assault causing serious harm to Mairead O'Dwyer on 19 May last year.
He was also sentenced to three years to run concurrently for two counts of robbery on the same night.
Ms O'Dwyer, from Kilsheelan in Clonmel in Co Tipperary, worked as a researcher on the Moncreiff show on Newstalk radio.
She was attacked close to where she lived in the Coombe area of Dublin as she made her way home after a night out with her work colleagues.
She underwent seven hours of surgery at St James's Hospital in Dublin.
In the Circuit Criminal Court in Dublin today, Jarosz apologised to Ms O'Dwyer. He also apologised to his other victims that night, two men from Spain and Croatia.
The Polish man said he had been drinking vodka and smoking hash on the night in question.
He said he realised that he might have killed Ms O'Dwyer and 'wished these things had not happened.'
Mr Justice Patrick McCarten described the attack as mindless and frenzied.
Handing down the sentence, he said what Jarosz did was rooted in a violent attitude which was also evident from his previous convictions.
Jarosz had three previous convictions in Poland and had been in a reform school there since the age of 11.
The judge took into account Jarosz's guilty plea, his cooperation with gardaí, his apology, the fact that he has a young child in Poland and the fact that he would be serving his sentence abroad.
His seven-year sentence is backdated to 25 May last year, when he was taken into custody.
