A man has pleaded guilty to charges relating to a loyalist bomb hoax targeting the former Irish foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney.

Darren James Service, 45, of Ballysillan Road in north Belfast, appeared at Belfast Crown Court on Wednesday.

His trial was due to begin on 7 September. Senior defence counsel Joseph O'Keefe KC told Judge Gordon Kerr KC that he had an application for Service to be re-arraigned on two of the three charges he faced which he had previously denied.

Service entered guilty pleas to hijacking a Vauxhall Vivaro van and placing an article causing a bomb hoax at the Houben Centre, Holy Cross Church on the Crumlin Road on 25 March 2022.

A senior Crown prosecutor told the court: "Those pleas are acceptable to the prosecution.''

He added that he had an application to leave the first count of preparation of acts of terrorism on the books of the court "and not to be proceeded with without the leave of this court or the Court of Appeal''.

Judge Kerr ordered a MARA (Multi-Agency Review Arrangements) report to be prepared on Service by the Department of Justice and set the plea and sentence hearing for 4 November.

O'Keefe said he would submit a number of updated medical reports on the defendant ahead of the plea hearing.

Service was released on continuing bail ahead of sentencing.

During a successful bail application at Belfast Crown Court almost three years ago, a judge was told that on 25 March, 2022, a workman was threatened and forced to transport a device placed in the back of his vehicle by two masked men to a peace-building event on the Crumlin Road in Belfast.

Coveney had been attending the event at the Houben Centre in the Holy Cross Church.

After the van driver alerted police to the device in his van, the centre was evacuated in what was later described as a hoax bomb alert.

It was the Crown case that the two masked men who hijacked the Vauxhall Vivaro van were driven to the scene by Service.

A prosecutor described the March 2022 incident as terrorist offences "carried out by the UVF".

The prosecutor said that when Service's home was searched in the aftermath of the incident, officers seized £100,000 in a safe as well as balaclavas, a replica firearm, UVF pins and luxury watches.

The court heard that a mobile phone belonging to the defendant, who at the time of the bail hearing had been on remand for 19 months, has never been found.