Martin Hayes jailed for manslaughter at Central Criminal Court

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Martin Hayes was jailed for 12 years and six months for manslaughter at the Central Criminal Court on 28 November 2023. Mr Justice Paul McDermott suspended no part of the sentence and backdated it to 4 April 2022, when Hayes first went into custody.

Hayes had pleaded not guilty to murdering Amadea McDermott at her home in Rathvale Drive, Ayrfield, Coolock, on or about 20 July 2017. On 13 November 2023, the jury found him not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter by an 11-1 majority.

Hayes told the trial that McDermott had inflicted the injury on herself. At sentencing, the judge found beyond reasonable doubt that Hayes had stabbed her once in the abdomen, causing her death.

The judge said the killing was an act of domestic violence and treated Hayes’s history of violence towards McDermott as an aggravating factor.