A former worker at Anglo Irish Bank has walked free from prison following a successful appeal against her sentence for conspiring to defraud Revenue.

Aoife Maguire of Rothe Abbey, South Circular Road, Kilmainham in Dublin was convicted along with two more senior officers of the former bank.

There were emotional scenes in court when Aoife Maguire realised she wouldn’t have to go back to the women’s prison at Mountjoy – her home since the end of July.

Arising from an audit in 2003, the former Assistant Manager had been found guilty of asking Anglo’s IT department to delete several accounts from its system, and for ensuing one account linked to a senior figure at the bank wasn’t handed over to Revenue.

She was sentenced to 18 months in prison, while former Chief Operations Officer Tiarnan O’Mahoney was jailed for three years and former Company Secretary Bernard Daly was handed a two year sentence.

Maguire’s appeal was against the severity of her sentence, and raised issues about her level of culpability. The court heard the lack of an open prison for women in Ireland should also have been considered.

After rising for half an hour, the three-judge panel agreed it was “unnecessarily severe” and handed down a new sentence of nine months but suspended any time not yet served, and she walked free from court a short time later.

Former Anglo Irish Worker Aoife Maguire has left court after sentence for conspiring to defraud Revenue was quashed pic.twitter.com/UUML1o5kDC

— Frank Greaney (@FrankGreaney) December 21, 2015