Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Thursday jailed Tetiana Stakhiv for 10 months after she admitted stealing €9,103 from Ireland’s social-protection department from October 2025 through April 2026. Judge Martin Nolan started the term on 25 May, when she was first held.
Garda Louise Keane said Stakhiv lived outside Ireland and came back roughly every two weeks to draw Jobseeker Allowance. A departmental check found she had never resided at any address she had supplied. Several Dublin–Poland flights sat close to the collection days, and her passport agreed with those records. Officers arrested her in May.
She told gardaí she had come to Ireland in late 2023 to fetch her then underage daughter and go back to Ukraine. The court heard that treatment for a serious illness stopped being available once fighting began in Ukraine, and that she afterwards bought medicine illicitly. Defending counsel Jennifer Jackson said Stakhiv spoke no English, had no family or other connection in Ireland, and held no cash or signs of wealth when detained. Once freed, she plans to live in Bulgaria with her daughter, who is 24.
Garda Keane accepted that the war had affected Stakhiv, that she was not running an elaborate fraud, and that sympathy was due only in part. Jackson said the money was not spent on lavish holidays and that her client was sorry her life had been upended when medicine became unavailable. Judge Nolan called it serious to feign residence in Ireland and then travel in and out solely to draw payments.