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A Fair City star says he was told he was in breach of his contract when he refused to play a harrowing rape scene.
"I objected to the storyline, it is a highly popular show and I wanted to protect myself, my family and my son," said actor Joe Gallagher, who plays an aggressive "wife beater" Dominic in the popular RTE soap.
Mr Gallagher has an annual 10-week contract with the show, but the incident happened two weeks into filming and while he has completed four weeks' filming with Fair City he has been written-out of the show for the present and is uncertain of his future.
However, a spokesperson for the show has said that his contract will be honoured and that he will be brought back in at a later stage.
"He did object and refused to act in it -- there was a rush to re-write the storyline and this has struck a chord with the public -- but it meant that a lot of changes had to be made in later episodes and because of this the producers don't quite know where Dominic's story is going to go," she added.
Joe Gallagher, who was in the film Veronica Guerin, said the reaction to the storyline concerning domestic violence with his on-screen partner Tracey, played by Hilda Fay, has been "tremendous".
But when the script involved raping his wife he refused to do it.
"Things spill over a bit into your private life," he says, "but you can deal with that. But a rape scene was bringing it to a different level, and I wanted to protect myself and my family," he says.
But when he was told he was in breach of contract he continued to turn up for work and then asked the producers for a letter of assurance that he would get his full 10 weeks' work.
This has not been forthcoming, but according to a spokesperson for the show, he will be back in the Carrickstown soap to complete the rest of his contract.
