A mother whose husband and little girl were killed in a house fire cried "this is a joke" in court on Thursday after the double killer was jailed for six and a half years.
Mr Justice Paul McDermott at the Central Criminal Court told the family of Anthony O'Brien and five-year-old Nadine O'Brien at the start of his sentencing remarks that nothing he does will remedy their grief and that the law is a "blunt instrument" that does not remove the suffering they continue to endure.
He said it was a "shocking and horrific case" but there is a scope to the sentence that the court can impose.
The judge noted that Philip Griffin (37), a criminal with 41 previous convictions, did not start the fire that caused the deaths, but saw it being lit and left without doing anything to raise the alarm even though he knew there could be people in the house.
The victims' family have been left with a "lifelong burden to bear", he said, particularly Kelly O'Brien who lost her husband and child.
The judge also considered Griffin's 41 previous convictions, including assault causing harm, robbery, escape from lawful custody, possession of drugs for sale or supply, criminal damage and possession of a knife.
Noting that Griffin pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the basis of gross negligence, the judge imposed a headline sentence of 11 years. However, he further noted that the crime would not have come to light had Griffin not come forward 10 years later, in May 2022, to admit his part. Until then it had been treated as an "accidental fire" following a finding by the Coroner's Court.
Considering all mitigating factors, including Griffin's expressions of remorse, the judge reduced the sentence to one of seven years with the final six months suspended.
Speaking outside the court, Kelly O'Brien said: "I'm in shock, disgusted. It's not as if my child passed in her sleep. My child woke up and had to fight."
She said Griffin will serve no more than four years and seven months and that the fire was "all because of him, he involved the other man, he brought the other man to our home, he didn't alert anyone, he didn't try and quench the fire, he didn't do anything."
She said she fought for justice alone for 12 years while her child's killer gets to continue his life.
She added: "He’s a coward and I hope to God that karma comes around and he gets the same death as he gave my husband and child because by God they suffered and four years and seven months is a joke."
Philip Griffin (37), of no fixed abode but originally from Tralee in Co Kerry, previously pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Anthony O'Brien (30) and Nadine O'Brien (5) at Killeen Heights in Tralee on May 12th, 2012.
At Griffin's sentencing hearing earlier this week, the court heard that after he had seen to his wife Kelly's escape, Anthony O'Brien and his five-year-old daughter Nadine were found wrapped in one another's arms by fire crews who had battled their way into the smoke-filled house.
Kelly O'Brien, Anthony's wife and Nadine's mother, told the court that she spent years insisting the fire had been started deliberately but gardai had insisted it was an accident.
In May 2022, a decade after the fire, Griffin contacted gardaí while in prison for a separate offence to say he wanted to make a voluntary statement. He told detectives that he and another named individual had climbed through a downstairs window of the O'Brien home in the early hours of the morning.
He said the other man used a cigarette lighter to set fire to a couch in the sitting room before both men made their escape through a window. The smoke from the fire caused the deaths of Anthony and Nadine while Kelly O'Brien managed to escape when Anthony lowered her to the ground from an upstairs bedroom window. She fractured her heel in the fall.
The court heard that the previous day, there had been an altercation between Griffin, Mr O'Brien, and others regarding payment for a €50 bag of heroin.
Griffin's barrister Brendan Grehan SC said his client went to gardaí because he "couldn't live with the guilt of what happened". Mr Grehan said his client wants to apologise to the O'Brien family and wants to be "locked up" for what he did. "That is his way of dealing with the guilt of his involvement in these matters," counsel said.
Meanwhile, in her statement to the court, Kelly O'Brien said she spent years insisting that the fire had been started deliberately but gardaí insisted it was an accident. She said she spent 12 years in and out of mental health units, unable to take care of her surviving family.
She added: "Because of the defendant, I am able to receive justice, but the truth is, if it wasn't for him I wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be here at all. He had 10 years to confess, he had his freedom."
She told Griffin, who appeared via video-link from prison because he did not want to be present in court, that he had killed an innocent child and a good father, who had never wronged him but only ever helped him out.
She said: "You took away a good man, a good father, a loyal friend, who was brought up in the [family care] system and finally found happiness, a family of his own who he cherished. You took away a child so full of life, so young, so caring, so funny, who loved animals and music and who had the most beautiful eyes and curly hair. She loved her dad so much and he loved her. The only closure I have is that she died with the first person she saw coming into this world and sadly, he was the last."
Ms O'Brien also spoke of the horrifying moment when she awoke to the smell of smoke. She woke her husband who opened the bedroom door, and was immediately "beaten back by thick black smoke".
As smoke filled the room, she said: "It was becoming obvious that we were about to face death, I was terrified for the safety of our daughter and we tried to calm her. He [Anthony] was so brave and calm in the hope of all of us getting out; he got us to lay on the floor with our heads down to help us breathe."
Mr O'Brien managed to open a window and lowered his wife to the ground, but he was unable to get himself or their daughter to safety. Ms O'Brien, having fractured her heel in the fall, said she knew something was wrong when she looked up but couldn't see her husband or Nadine. She screamed for help and crawled to a neighbour's home.
The next thing she can remember is waking up in the hospital surrounded by family, who told her that Nadine and Anthony were not going to make it
