Tetiana Stakhiv, 51, admitted in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Thursday that she had taken €9,103 in state benefits. The sums were paid from October 2025 until April.
Garda Louise Keane told the hearing Stakhiv was based beyond Ireland and came back roughly twice a month for jobseeker’s allowance. Officials later found she had never occupied any address she listed. Journeys between Dublin and Poland sat close to the dates she collected money, and passport stamps agreed with that pattern.
She was arrested in May. Stakhiv said she had entered Ireland late in 2023 to meet her daughter, who was then a minor, before heading back to Ukraine. Keane agreed the invasion had marked the accused, who had neither funds nor luxury goods, no command of English, and nobody close to her in the jurisdiction. The garda added that a jail term would weigh heavily, that Stakhiv was not an organised schemer, and that her sympathy went only so far.
Jennifer Jackson, for the defence, said Stakhiv hopes, after she leaves prison, to join her daughter aged 24 in Bulgaria. Counsel argued the money was not spent on costly holidays. She said her client regretted the conduct. War had overturned daily life in Ukraine, ending hospital care for a serious illness, so Stakhiv turned to unofficial sellers for the drugs.
Judge Martin Nolan called the conduct grave: arriving, posing as a resident, then repeatedly leaving and returning only to draw payments. He ordered 10 months in prison, counted from 25 May, when Stakhiv was first held.