Five years for cannabis at airport

A man who was caught with €17,614 of cannabis after a sniffer dog identified his luggage as suspicious at Dublin Airport has been sentenced to five years in prison.

Ross Hyland (aged 20) of Mount Olive Road, Kilbarrack, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of the drugs for sale or supply at Dublin Airport on January 18, 2008.

Hyland told Garda Leonard Browne that staff at his hotel room in Amsterdam must have put the drugs in his luggage. He then admitted to packing them in his own suitcase but claimed he found the drugs outside a café.

Gda Browne told Mr Paul Carroll BL, prosecuting, that Hyland had 12 previous convictions for criminal damage and public order offences.

Judge Katherine Delahunt said that Hyland’s explanation was both "wholly untrue and unbelievable" before she suspended the last 18 months of the sentence on strict conditions.

Gda Browne agreed with Mr Patrick Gageby SC, defending, that Hyland was effectively "the black sheep that had lost his way" having come from a respectable family.

He accepted that "he was not the brains of this operation or the brains of any other operation".

Mr Gageby told Judge Delahunt that his client was a cannabis user and was "not a man of any great maturity at all" but had the support of a good family.