Cannabis grower gets suspended sentence

SAYING he was “perhaps driven to trying to survive in the magnificent peninsula of Dunmanus Bay”, a judge suspended the sentence of a man who turned to growing cannabis on a massive scale after his equestrian centre went out of business.

Leo Bolger, 45, said through his senior counsel Tom Creed yesterday he knew he was facing a jail sentence but asked the judge to suspend as much of it as possible.

Judge Patrick J Moran said he was prepared give the defendant the benefit of a suspended sentence.

“I think perhaps you were driven to trying to survive in the magnificent peninsula of Dunmanus Bay,” Judge Moran said.

The judge made this comment against Bolger’s background of falling out with a neighbour about a drain and the neighbour then using a gas cannon to make gunshot bangs to clear birds.

Bolger said, at worst, the bangs went on all day at one-minute intervals and that this made his equestrian business untenable as the horses could be frightened.

He said the neighbour had no cereal crops to necessitate the use of a gas cannon.

He ran the equestrian school from 1989 to 2006 in Dunbeacon in Durrus, Co Cork, but had to give it up because of the cannon bangs. He said financial desperation forced him to start growing cannabis.

Detective Sergeant Fergal Foley said the cultivation of the cannabis was the most sophisticated operation of its kind seen in west Cork.

Bolger built a bunker in an overgrown area of his lands. In it he created two rooms, linked by a hallway. One room was used for germination of cannabis plants. The other was used for cultivating plants to maturity.

Advanced hydroponics, heat regulation, watering and a lighting system revolving around the plants to give an even quality of light were all used in the cultivation.

The street value of the cannabis plants at the time of the garda drugs search was at least €50,000. The charge to which he pleaded guilty was one of having drugs for sale or supply at a time when their street value exceeded €13,000, an offence which can carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and up to life imprisonment.

Judge Moran cited the McGinty case, which gives a precedent for a judge suspending the entirety of a sentence on such a charge.