A man against whom a jury made a record award of €600,000 for his repeated sexual assault and abuse of a young woman must pay her €200,000 in phases as a condition of his securing a stay on the overall award, the High Court decided yesterday.
The stay will operate if the man, Simon Murphy, decides to appeal the award to the Supreme Court.
However, Mr Justice Kearns was told by lawyers for Murphy that he is having difficulties raising a sum to put forward as a term of a stay.
It was stated he was only a joint owner of some property - a pub, shop and some 10 acres of land - and that the overall value of his assets was considerably less than €600,000.
After hearing submissions from counsel for both sides, the judge said he was requiring €200,000 to be paid as a condition of a stay.
He decided that an initial phase of €50,000 should be paid within four weeks of the "date of perfection" of the court order in the case.
Both sides would have liberty to come back to court later to deal with other phasings of the €150,000 balance.
On February 17th last, a jury of seven men and five women made the €600,000 award to the woman, now in her mid-20s, against Simon Murphy, The Hollow, Ramsgrange, Co Wexford.
In 2002, Murphy was sentenced to eight years in prison on a number of counts of sexual abuse of the plaintiff and for other offences.
Two of the eight years were suspended but Murphy is still in prison.
The woman was repeatedly sexually abused between 1990 and 1995 when she was aged between 12 and 17.
The jury was told Murphy admitted he sexually abused the plaintiff and that the only issue it had to decide was the amount of damages.
The case was one of the first of its kind to come before the courts and the award was the biggest made by a High Court jury in a civil action.