The sentencing of a woman who murdered her partner's four-year-old son has been adjourned until the New Year as the child's mother is unwell and unable to attend court.
The defendant, who faces the mandatory term of life imprisonment, will appear before the Central Criminal Court again on 12 January.
The child's mother will be given the opportunity to make a statement on that date.
Lawyers for the Director of Public Prosecutions told Mr Justice Paul McDermott that the child's mother, who attended every day of the murder trial, was anxious to attend the sentencing hearing.
Prosecuting Counsel Anne Rowland said the mother was "unwell" and asked for an adjournment.
The defendant cannot be identified to protect the anonymity of a child who had been due to give evidence in the case.
Before the case was adjourned, Senior Counsel Ronan Kennedy for RTÉ, the Irish Times, and the publishers of the Irish Independent, said the media wanted to make further submissions in relation to the anonymity of the accused woman.
Mr Justice McDermott adjourned all matters until 12 January.
The defendant initially pleaded not guilty to the boy's murder but guilty to manslaughter. On the fourth day of her trial, following a number of days of medical evidence, she pleaded guilty to the boy's murder in March 2021.
In her opening speech, Ms Rowland said that the defendant had described to gardaí keeping the boy in his room in the days prior to his death, where he had to sit on the floor and was only allowed out to go to the bathroom or for emergencies.
The defendant said that the boy was a "bold cheeky child" and often had to be "grounded".
She told gardaí that on the day the boy suffered his fatal injuries, she "snapped" and recalled "shaking him and screaming at him to behave" before he fell on the floor.
The trial heard evidence that the child was covered in bruising all over his body which was of varying ages. A paediatric consultant who examined him in hospital after he had undergone a procedure to try to ease the swelling on his brain, described how the staff in the operating theatre gasped when they saw all the injuries on his body.
A state pathologist told the court the injuries to the boy were consistent with someone shaking the child as well as forcefully striking his head against a hard object like a wall or floor. She said the injuries to his brain were like those you would see a road traffic collision.
Dr Heidi Okkers said these kinds of injuries were not caused by falling from a bed, as the child's father had initially claimed. She said tears to the child's liver would have been caused by direct trauma such as a punch or a kick or a knee to the abdomen. And she said either the injury to the child's head or liver could have caused his death.
The child's father has already been jailed for seven years for assisting an offender and for endangerment of a child and child cruelty.
Passing sentence on the father last year, Mr Justice McDermott said a small, defenceless, four-year-old little boy had been isolated in a continuously frightening situation. He said there was a callousness in how he had been treated by his father and said the man's "deliberate disregard" for his son's welfare was "extremely difficult to understand".
The judge said he was satisfied that there was "a clear and disturbing pattern of abuse" of the child, of which the boy's father was aware. He said the man had played a significant part in not only "hiding" the child but also minimising those injuries.
