The television chef, Tim Allen, was sentenced to 240 hours of community service and ordered to pay €40,000 to a child welfare charity at Midleton District Court yesterday.
He had pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography following a raid last May as part of the Garda Operation Amethyst.
Allen operates the Ballymaloe cookery school with his wife, Darina Allen, who was in court with him, her grip tightening on his hand as the evidence was given.
His children, Isaac, Toby, Lydia and Emily, sat next to their father on the bench, occasionally offering a supportive glance or smile.
The judge said he was replacing a nine-month prison sentence with community service and the "healthy" contribution to a local charity, the Edith Wilkins Foundation, which helps street children in Calcutta.
He also urged the public to exercise some restraint in its approach to the defendant's family. "The media have punished Timothy Allen," the judge added, "before they had a right to do so."
Allen will also have to inform the Garda of his name and address, and any address he visits for more than seven days, for a period of five years. He will have to inform gardaí if he leaves the State for seven days or more, and they will inform the police forces responsible for the places he is visiting if similar offences are on the statute books of their jurisdictions.
This is an automatic provision of the Sex Offenders Act, 2001, which provides for this supervision for a period of five years for those, like Allen, convicted under the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act and subject to any sentence, including a non-custodial one.
Fine Gael's justice spokesman last night called on the Director of Public Prosecutions to appeal the sentence. Mr John Deasy said it suggested there was "one law for the rich and one for the poor".
"I don't think it is good enough to give this man a suspended sentence when he has been looking at images of five-year-olds . . . ," Mr Deasy told The Irish Times.
"The sentence is too lenient. It smacks of someone who has money being able to get off relatively scot free for a very serious offence."
Allen told the court he was "absolutely horrified" at what he had done. Child pornography did an enormous amount of untold damage to a lot of young people, and his actions were "inexcusable".
Det Sgt Brian Goulding, of Midleton Garda station, described finding a total of 977 images on three of 16 computers seized from Allen's property, as well as 92 that were printed off. The images were mainly of female children, some as young as five.
In a statement on the case, the ISPCC said there was clear evidence from other countries that those in possession of child pornography represented a real risk to children, and it called for a major child-abuse investigation to be carried out around each of those found guilty of possession of such material.