A SCHOOLGIRL has described her mother as "vermin" after a court heard harrowing details of the mother's neglect of her seven children over a nine-year period.
The girl – now 17 – told Ennis Circuit Court that at the age of 10 she was left to care for her newly prematurely born sister.
Wearing her school uniform in court, she said: "I was 10 years old, how I was supposed to know how to look after her?
"I didn't know how to hold her or change her nappy. We didn't have proper things like a bottle, a steriliser, a cot."