The National Police (Garda) said that when he entered the bus, he outlined the legislation to the defendant, telling him he was committing an offence under the Health Act 1947.
Mr Heasman told the court that he was exempt from wearing a mask for health reasons and he had told the officer that at the time. The officer asked him for medical evidence but Heasman told the officer that he was not required to provide it due to the data protection on personal health and medical records.
He described the charges against him as “trumped up”.
Judge Fiona Lydon said that in the light of the public health emergency, Mr Heasman’s behavior had been ‘totally inappropriate”.
Police officers examine the entrance of the Orthodox Church where an attacker armed with a sawn-off shotgun wounded an Orthodox priest in a shooting, on October 31, 2020, in Lyon, said a police source. | AFP via Getty Images/Jeff Pachoud
France is deploying military forces at religious sites as pastors are anxious and anguished after a Greek Orthodox priest was attacked with a sawn-off shotgun in the city of Lyon on Saturday, days after three people were killed in an Islamist extremist attack at a Catholic church in the city of Nice.
Nikolas Kakavelakis, a 45-year-old priest and father of two, was wounded in the attack, according to Antoine Callot, the pastor at another Greek Orthodox church in Lyon, The Epoch Times reported.