This article is from page 16 of the 2008-06-10 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
SHARON Collins is not a greedy woman and the allegations against her do not make sense, according to one of the men she is accused of conspiring to murder – who planted a kiss on her lips in open court.
PJ Howard kissed Ms Collins af- ter he stepped down from the wit- ness box, having completed giving evidence to the trial just before noon last Thursday.
The 58-year-old businessman leaned over to the accused woman, touched her cheek and kissed her, be- fore swiftly leaving the courtroom. Minutes earlier, she had broken down in tears as he told the court she was “far from” greedy and had looked af- ter him when he had been ill.
Asked about the allegations against her, he said, “It doesn’t make sense to me. It is totally out of character. I find it very, very, very hard to be- lieve.
‘In the eight years since I’ve known Sharon, she has never asked me for anything. That’s one of the things I find astonishing. I often offered her things and she said ‘No’.
“If she was given three or four hun- dred euro for herself the first thing she would do was make sure her two lads had enough. She’d be far from a greedy person, far from it. I made a Statement to that effect,’ he said.
“When I wasn’t well she looked after me extremely well. She had a very good life for us. I was very happy with it. I presume she was too. We didn’t feel there were any serious
problems between us until this situa- tion arose. Prior to that, we were liv- ing quite normally,” he said.
During a 20-minute cross-exami- nation by Paul O’Higgins SC for Ms Collins, Mr Howard was asked about a “marriage” to Ms Collins. Mr O’Higgins referred to a pre-nuptial agreement and asked was part of that to ease Mr Howard’s two sons’ state of mind.
“They were considerably involved in the business at the time and would have expected to be left the business. The business is too small to be di- vided up,” said Mr Howard.
“It has been put across here that it was a very fast decision. This was not a very fast decision. It was de- cided over a number of months. We Spent time discussing it. We both took legal advice. I was told by my
solicitor that pre-nuptials were not accepted by the Irish courts. This was made perfectly clear to Sharon. She accepted this and we decided that we could not get married,’ said Mr Howard.
““T think it was well established that we were not married,’ he added.