Kathleen Chada, whose former husband murdered their two young sons, has said her “greatest fear is that he’s going to finish the job” if he is released from prison.

Sanjeev Chada was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014 for killing Eoghan (10) and Ruairí (five) in 2013. He is eligible for parole this year.

Kathleen Chada told RTÉ radio’s Today with David McCullagh show that she had met the parole board on Tuesday.

She felt the board had been respectful and empathetic and she felt “heard”.

It will be 13 years in July since her sons were murdered by their father and she said it felt like an insult that he was applying for parole.

“I would have assumed he would have simply done his time. I feel it’s an insult to Eoghan and Ruairí. That was something that was a surprise to me and I found that hard to grapple with,” she said.

Although she did not feel he would get parole, she could not be “absolutely certain”, she said.

“There’s a reason it’s there. It’s his right to apply for it. I didn’t think he would ever apply.”

It was “triggering” to have to go through the details again of what her boys had suffered in their last moments.

The parole board made things as easy as possible, but it was “bonkers” that a hearing could be held at 12 years into a life sentence, she said.

Minimum sentencing before consideration for parole, as exists in other jurisdictions, would have helped had it been available, she said.

She said the parole board meeting had been important as it was an opportunity for her to “let them know” what her former husband did.

“They needed to know, because he pled guilty, none of the details are out there, so I needed them to know what he’s capable of.”

From correspondence she found out he had planned to kill her too and her fear is “he’s simply going to finish the job”, she said. “That was in his mind.”

She said she is safe while he is in prison.

“That’s the bottom line. I know I’m safe. I won’t feel that if he’s released. I can’t feel safe if he’s out in the public. I can put all of the conditions in place to keep him away from me, but if he chooses not to do that, how can I ever feel safe?”

When asked about the possibility her former husband had been rehabilitated in prison, she replied: “How can you ever rehabilitate somebody like him? Because what he did was so hidden, what he was capable of was so, so hidden.

“We were a normal family, he had the ability to hide so much inside of himself. I know, based on emails that he himself wrote, that his intention was to take my life as well as the boys, and that intention was there about a year, year and a half before he actually did what he did.

“So he lived with me, he slept next to me every night, knowing that somewhere in the back of his mind he wanted to kill me. But I never felt threatened, I never felt there was anything but love there, and so if you can hide something like that, and then to go as far as he did in killing Eoghan and Ruairí, then to me he’s capable of anything.”