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A husband demanded that his unfaithful wife sell her top of the range €50,000 car and drive instead a 1995 Opel Corsa as part of his conditions for moving back into the family home.

At a provincial family law court, the mother told the court that her husband moved out after he found out that she was having an affair with a local married man.

The eight week long affair ended and the woman said that her husband made three demands for him to return to the family home: that she see a psychiatrist; that she give her him €65,000 of her redundancy money and she sell her top of the range car and drive instead a 1995 Opel Corsa.

She said: “They were the three conditions that I had to agree to, but I didn’t agree to them. I did give him €20,000 in cash.”

In the court, the woman laid bare the breakdown of her marriage in the aftermath of her affair during an unsuccessful Safety Order application against her former husband.

She said: “The pillar that my Safety Order application stands on is the fact that my kids are being affected and I am being emotionally and psychologically tortured for four years.

"He is a man who can’t let go and accept that our marriage is over.”

The woman said that the fall out from the breakdown of her marriage “has affected the children emotionally and psychologically - I actually feel that the damage is irreparable”.

She said: “They are at a time of their life when they are so vulnerable - it breaks my heart.”

Recalling the night that her husband found about the affair four years ago, the woman said that her husband had come into her downstairs bedroom to give her Solpadeine after the two had come home from a night out with friends.

The woman said her phone went off with a message from the man she was having the affair with.

She said: “It is a time I am not proud of and it still eats me today. My husband took the phone and he came back into the room and he pulled me out into the kitchen and he slapped me across the face.

She told the court: “I would nearly give a man that because I saw his heart break in front of me.”

The mother told the court that her husband called her parents at 3am “and then he put something up on Facebook to this fella’s Facebook account”.

She said: “He took my dongle and smashed my iPhone so I couldn’t take it down.”

The woman said that her husband moved out of the family home for the Summer and made his demands about moving back in.

The man did move back in after receiving the €20,000 in cash.

She said: “I was so sorry and contrite and every day I told him that.”

She told the court: “I can’t justify why I had the affair - I am absolutely contrite in what I did.”

The woman said that her husband would ask her questions over and over again about the affair.

She said: “He accused me of having six affairs with different men.”

The woman said that one year after the affair, she recommenced contact with the ‘other man' after bumping into him at a local garage.

She told the court that she bought two mobile phones for the two to keep in contact, but there was nothing physical between the two the second time around.

Solicitor for her husband told the court that the affair had ended the marriage of the other man and his wife.

After the husband learned that his wife had recommenced contact with the 'other man', she arrived home to find that he had packed up all of her belongings.

She said: “I unpacked my stuff and he packed his stuff.”

She said: “The night he was leaving, I asked him not to leave. I was on the floor of the utility room crying, asking him to forgive me - for him to try to get help and move on.”

The woman said that her husband threatened violence in one flashpoint.

Her husband moved out and in another flashpoint which occurred a number of months later when the woman arrived to pick up her children, her mother in law told her “you are not getting the girls back, you are only a drunk and a whore”.

The husband was also there and the Gardai arrived to defuse the situation where the mother was able to bring her children home.

She also confirmed that around that time, the HSE and Gardai received a number of anonymous reports alleging child neglect in her care and they were all investigated and nothing arose from them.

One night later that year, the husband arrived outside the family home at around 11pm at night and started shouting up to his former wife “Who are you in bed with now? I can hear him, I can hear him.”

In 2013, there was another incident where the man pinned his former wife up against a set of double doors.

She suffered bruising as a result and made a formal complaint to Gardai.

The man was charged with assault and a court date was fixed for the case.

However, the woman was overseas with work and was unable to attend court and as a result the case was struck out.

The man’s solicitor told the court that the accusation of assault was denied and would have been contested.

The woman said that last month she received a welcome text from her former husband where he said: “It is time that we got on, it is clear that the last two years have been a waste of energy and anger.” However, this coincided with insulting texts.

She said: “This is the cycle of behaviour that I have become used to and that has why it has taken me so long to come in here.”

She said: “The man is a good father, but at times he doesn’t realise that he is affecting them. I want my kids to have a chance of a normal life."

The former husband didn’t give evidence in the case and the judge ruled that the threshold for a Safety Order had not been met and refused the application.