A man who was promised €300 to take part in a €2 million drug dealing operation has been jailed for two years.
Desmond Mulvey (34) told gardai he became involved in the crime because he had built up a €1,700 debt from his own drug use. He has three previous convictions for more minor offences.
Mulvey of Berryfield Drive pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of just under €200,000 worth of cannabis at a slip road on the M50 on February 27, 2013.
Judge Mary Ellen Ring imposed a five year sentence but suspended the last three years on condition that Mulvey engage with the Probation Services for one year.
At the earlier sentence hearing of his co-accused, Terry O’Donoghue (50) and Michael Lawlor (40), O’Donoghue told gardai that a man had approached him in a pub shortly after his teenage daughter had died and asked if he had enough money to cover the funeral.
The total amount of cannabis found on the three men had an estimated street value of €2 million.
The court heard that as a result of confidential information gardai from the Garda National Drugs Unit set up a surveillance operation at the Cookstown Enterprise Unit in Tallaght.
They saw O’Donoghue arriving in a van and going to an industrial unit. He took a number of bags from there and put them into a van. Gardaí followed O'Donoghue to a drop off point on the N7, where he transferred the bags to another vehicle.
Det Gda Kieran O'Reilly told Gerardine Small BL, prosecuting, that the GNDU let O'Donoghue’s van go, but intercepted the other car and arrested Mulvey in the car. Gardai found just below 10kg of cannabis herb worth €199, 584 in bags in that vehicle.
GNDU members later saw O'Donoghue retrieve more bags from the Cookstown warehouse. They followed him to where he met Lawlor at the lane in Castlewarden and arrested both men at the scene.
O'Donoghue had placed 30kg of cannabis herb worth €600,000 in bags into the boot of Lawlor's Ford Focus car. O’Donoghue told gardai that there was a further 65kg of cannabis herb valued at €1.29 million.
O’Donoghue, of Ely Close, Old Court Road, pleaded guilty to possessing €2 million of cannabis herb at a slip road off the N7, a lane at Castlewarden, Co. Kildare and at Cookstown Industrial Estate, Tallaght between February 27 and 28, 2013.
Lawlor, of Cois Na Choil, Pollerton, Carlow, pleaded guilty to possessing just over €600,000 of cannabis herb at the lane at Castlewarden, Co. Kildare on February 28, 2013.
Judge Ring said the men were exploited by others to play an essential role in a significant drugs operation.
