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Ioan Remi Makula: school assault, 51 previous convictions and removal after a Ryanair offence

He received nine months for fracturing a 16-year-old former girlfriend's cheekbone inside her school. Six years later, with 51 previous convictions recorded in court, he was jailed again after exposing himself beside a woman on a passenger flight.

Published 29 July 2026 · Remigration Ireland case ledger
51Previous convictions reported in 2022
9 months2016 assault sentence
3 months2022 flight sentence
October 2025Reported removal to Romania

Ioan Remi Makula accumulated a record that moved from theft and road-traffic offending to a serious assault on a teenage girl and then to what a District Court judge called “outrageous” conduct beside a female passenger on a commercial flight.

Later reporting identifies Makula as Romanian and says he was removed to Romania in October 2025. A contemporaneous 2022 sentencing report, however, called him Polish. The earlier 2016 court report described him as originally from Romania, and a remand report said he travelled on a Romanian passport. This file records that conflict rather than silently choosing between inconsistent nationality descriptions.

A 16-year-old attacked inside her school

Makula was 19 when he came before Galway District Court in 2016. He had pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to his 16-year-old former girlfriend and to entering the grounds of Presentation Secondary School as a trespasser.

The court heard that Makula followed the girl into the school toilets, forced his way into the cubicle and punched her in the face. The blow fractured her cheekbone. By the sentencing hearing, she had left school, was receiving counselling and physiotherapy, and told the court that feeling in her face remained affected.

Judge Mary Fahy rejected an application to suspend part of the sentence. She said the case was a serious criminal assault and imposed nine months' imprisonment. The published record says leave to appeal was granted, but the later 2022 sentencing report still recorded a nine-month term for the assault.

The pre-existing record

At the 2016 assault hearing, the court was told that Makula already had 10 convictions for theft and traffic offences. Weeks later, another court report described him as a recidivist with three similar shoplifting convictions, the school assault, a burglary and motoring offences.

That later 2016 hearing concerned €122 of clothing placed in a suitcase and taken from Penneys. Makula pleaded guilty and received four months, then lodged cash to appeal the severity of that sentence. The located reports do not establish the appeal outcome, so that four-month term is not included in the prison-cost calculation below.

By February 2022, Sergeant Aiden Lonergan told Ennis District Court that Makula had 51 previous convictions, mainly for road-traffic matters, including the 2016 assault causing harm. The public reports do not itemise all 51 convictions; this file therefore does not invent a charge-by-charge list that the open record cannot support.

Conduct beside a woman on a Ryanair flight

On 4 February 2022, Makula travelled on Ryanair flight FR4776 from Manchester to Shannon. The court heard that he was seen masturbating beside a female passenger. Statements were taken from the captain, crew and passengers, CCTV was obtained, and passengers were described as very upset.

His solicitor said Makula maintained that he exposed himself because he believed the woman wanted to see his penis. Judge Mary Larkin said it was inconceivable that he could have held such a belief. She said his behaviour upset the woman and the entire plane and could not be tolerated.

Makula pleaded guilty to engaging in threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour, by word or gesture, with intent to cause a breach of the peace or recklessness as to whether one might occur. The offence was prosecuted under section 2(a) of the Air Navigation and Transport Act 1973. That exact legal category matters: the published 2022 report does not describe a conviction for sexual assault.

Three months, not two years

On 23 February 2022, Judge Larkin sentenced Makula to three months' imprisonment, backdated to when he had first entered custody. The contemporaneous account by court reporter Gordon Deegan is corroborated by a separate publication of the same day's proceedings.

An Irish Times report in January 2026 subsequently said Makula had received two years for the flight incident. That figure conflicts with the detailed sentencing reports published on the day of sentence. This ledger uses the contemporaneous three-month term and flags the later discrepancy rather than repeating it as fact.

Removal under Operation Moonridge

In January 2026, An Garda Síochána announced that Operation Moonridge had removed 25 non-Irish nationals convicted of sexual crimes during 2025: 14 non-EU nationals and 11 EU nationals. Gardaí said all were subject to exclusion periods from Ireland, but the official release did not name the individuals.

The Irish Times identified Makula as one of four registered sex offenders removed to Romania in October 2025 as part of a larger group. It reported that the removals were carried out under deportation orders or, for EU citizens, EU removal orders. The article does not state Makula's individual exclusion period or publish his order, so this file does not infer either.

The public record also does not explain the precise conviction or statutory route by which Makula became subject to sex-offender registration. His 2022 conviction, as reported at sentence, was the air-navigation offence described above. Both facts can be recorded without relabelling that conviction.

Case chronology

What the custodial sentences may cost

The Irish Prison Service reported a 2024 average cost of €99,072 per available, staffed prison space per year, excluding capital expenditure. The confirmed nine-month assault sentence and three-month flight sentence total one nominal year, producing a gross capacity benchmark of about €99,072.

This is not a Makula-specific invoice. It applies a system-wide annual average to nominal sentences and does not establish time actually served, remission, appeal effects or marginal cost. It excludes policing, prosecution, courts, legal aid, victim services, Garda monitoring and the cost of the later removal operation.

What the record establishes

The sourced record establishes a serious assault on a teenage girl, a nine-month sentence, a subsequent air-navigation conviction and three-month sentence, and a court-reported total of 51 previous convictions. It also establishes that contemporaneous court reports and a later national report disagree about both the 2022 sentence length and Makula's nationality description.

The later removal is not an assumption drawn from his name or offending. It is specifically reported by The Irish Times, while the Garda's own release confirms the scope and total of Operation Moonridge without naming him. That is the limit of what the public documentation currently proves.

Sources and record notes

Record checked: 29 July 2026. The three-month 2022 sentence is taken from contemporaneous court reports; the conflicting two-year figure in the later removal report is not used.