Woman who hid heroin in bra gets five and a half years

A mother of four who hid a €24,000 stash of heroin in her bra and was then arrested for two further drugs offences while on bail has been given five and a half years in consecutive sentences.

Susan Devine (aged 37) was caught with heroin for sale or supply near the Merchants Quay treatment centre while on bail for hiding the drugs in her bra for her brother and was arrested the following year for allowing her home to be used to store drugs.

Devine, Fortlawn Avenue, Clonsilla, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of heroin valued at €23,945 near her home on January 4, 2006; possession of heroin valued at €1,477 at Ormonde Quay on February 9, 2006; and allowing her home to be used to store heroin valued at €1,300 on September 27, 2007.

Defence counsel Mr Luán Ó Braonáin SC said Devine had been used to transport the large drugs stash by her brother because he believed she would be less likely to be stopped by gardaí. He said she had volunteered to gardaí that she had the drugs on her person after being arrested with her brother in his car and handed them over.

He said she was arrested with her drug-addicted partner for the Ormonde Quay offence and that the drugs found at her home in 2007 belonged to him. He said she found it difficult to say "no" to him.

He said she came from a difficult family background and had taken refuge in drugs after she had a stillborn birth in 2004.

Mr Ó Braonáin said Devine was stable on a methadone program and accepted responsibility for the offences. He said she had no trappings of wealth, had recently become a grandmother and finds it difficult to be separated from her children as she has been in custody for 13 months.

Judge Tony Hunt said that given Devine’s genuine remorse, plea of guilty, co-operation with gardaí and her particular personal circumstances, he was satisfied that it would be unjust to impose the presumptive minimum sentence of 10 years.

He suspended the last 18 months of the sentence after he accepted that Devine could be described as "a holder rather than a dealer" and that she had been somewhat under the influence of other people, namely her brother and partner.

He noted that Devine’s eldest teenage daughter was caring for her younger siblings since her mother’s remand in custody and said it would be in the public’s best interest to reunite what he said was a "vulnerable family" to provide some stability for the accused’s children.

Judge Hunt said he had read various reports and testimonials that had been handed into court on behalf of the accused which outlined the "turnaround" Devine has made in her life "for her sake and that of her family".

Devine’s long-time heroin addict brother Christopher (aged 41) was jailed by Judge Katherine Delahunt for 11 years in consecutive terms on May 2 last for having two caches of heroin within 14 months.

He told gardaí he was selling the second cache to pay back his "debt" to the owners of a €24,000 stash that his sister Susan had taken from her bra cup.

He told gardaí he had collected the parcel from the roadside but would not say whom he had taken it from for fear that "my head would be blown off".

The second cache, worth €7,597, was found buried in jars in the back garden of the family home just over a year later, on February 8, 2007, while he was on bail for the first seizure.

The court heard he had trained as a counsellor in an attempt to try to assist other drug addicts, even though he had been taking heroin himself at the time.

He then managed to wean himself off heroin, having attended a residential drug treatment centre and was free of drugs at the time of sentencing. Judge Delahunt suspended the final three years of his sentence to take account of his efforts to rehabilitate himself.