A successful Dublin businessman who rugby tackled a woman to the ground and sexually assaulted her as she walked home at night, has been jailed for six months.

Aviation broker Anthony Lyons, aged 53, of Griffith Avenue has also been ordered to pay €75,000 compensation to his 27-year-old victim who he attacked on October 3, 2010.

Mr Lyons's victim was walking along a North Dublin Street in the early hours when she was grabbed by the businessman, pushed towards a wooded area and sexually assaulted until a passer-by heard her screams and her attacker fled.

The 53-year-old initially completely denied the offence and was released on bail. Several months later he handed a statement to gardaí admitting the attack but claiming he was overcome with an “irresistible urge” brought on by the cholesterol medication he had started taking the day before.

The jury rejected the unusual defence.

Today, Judge Desmond Hogan said the manner in which the attack was committed puts it at the higher end of the scale as it involved violence of a seriously frightening nature.

But Mr Lyons is considered at low risk of reoffending, and as a man of means the judge ordered him to pay the injured party €75,000 compensation.

However, there were shocked gasps when he suspended all but six months of a six-year prison sentence and outside the court the victim's grandmother said: "Money talks".