'No one will take me on': Irene White murderer says he can't get lawyer to advance appeal

Niall Power, aged 51 and formerly of Riverstown, County Louth, has been pursuing an appeal against his life sentence for the murder of Irene White, a 43-year-old woman killed at her home in Dundalk on 6 April 2005. Power pleaded guilty to murder in 2019 and was described by the court as the intermediary who arranged the killing on behalf of another party. He subsequently introduced the person who carried out the fatal attack, Anthony Lambe of Castleblayney, County Monaghan, to the individual who had commissioned the crime. In June 2024, Power appeared before the Court of Appeal to report that he had been unable to secure legal representation despite approaching between twenty and thirty solicitors. The court adjourned the matter to December of that year. By December 2024, Power's legal representatives had secured a mandate and indicated they would seek to have his guilty plea set aside on grounds that he was suffering a mental breakdown at the time he entered the plea. Mr Justice John Edwards granted legal aid and scheduled a further hearing for January 2025 to allow for filing of an Enlargement of Time application, as the standard appeal window had expired. At the January hearing, the court granted Power legal aid to pursue a psychiatric assessment as part of his appeal strategy. The matter was adjourned to March 2025 to allow his legal team to file an affidavit setting out the grounds for extending time to appeal. Lambe, who pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbing in January 2018, received a concurrent life sentence. Both men have maintained they were acting on instructions from a third party. At the time of Power's sentencing in 2019, victim impact statements were delivered by Ms White's family, with her sister calling on authorities to prosecute the alleged orchestrator of the killing.