A Clare man has been convicted of sexually assaulting a one-year-old baby ten years ago.
The 45-year-old man had pleaded NOT guilty in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to sexual assault between April 2005 and October 2006 in County Clare.
The man was previously sentenced to twelve years for sexually abusing two young girls.
He will be sentenced in April on this new conviction.
After a three-day trial, a jury of nine men and three women returned a majority guilty verdict after deliberating for just under four hours.
During the trial the jury was told that the victim's older sister, who was ten at the time of the incident, was the main witness in the case.
She told the court how the victim and her siblings were living in 'extremely difficult' circumstances at the time of the incident. Their parents were heavy drinkers and the children would often go hungry and have no heat or electricity in the house.
The court heard that when the baby girl was brought home from hospital, she was handed to her older sister to look after so the parents could go drinking.
The witness testified that she came home from school and walked into the house to find her baby sister naked on the sitting room floor, with the man abusing her.
She grabbed a poker and hit the man over the head to get him to stop.
The victim's sister, now 19, said the abuser knew the family and would often arrive at the house extremely drunk and fall asleep in a chair. He would sometimes be left alone in the house to keep an eye on the children.
