Drug dealer handed 10-year jail term

A convicted drug dealer has been given a 10-year sentence by Judge Frank O’Donnell after gardaí spotted him digging up heroin worth €178,000 three months after he was released from a previous drug sentence.

Brendan Reilly (aged 44) of Langrishe Place, Dublin 1, pleaded guilty before a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court jury of being in possession of the drugs for sale or supply on the Clontarf Road on June 16, 2007.

Inspector Stephen Courage told Mr Paul Carroll BL, prosecuting, that Reilly was jailed for 10 years in 2002 by Judge Yvonne Murphy after he admitted to having heroin valued at Ir£30,000 in his home in Courtney Place, Summerhill in December 2001.

Reilly’s sentence was up for review after five years in March 2007 and he was released from prison about three months before he committed this crime. He is currently serving the remaining five years of that sentence which was reactivated after he was charged with this offence.

Reilly’s 71 previous convictions included other drug dealing and road traffic offences.

Insp Courage said that Reilly had been under surveillance when gardaí saw him with the drugs. He made admissions at the scene and said that he was there "to collect the stuff because I owe 10 grand to someone".

He said that he was due to meet someone at one o’clock and if he did not show up they would know he had been arrested. "I’ll get a bullet for it. I can’t have any of my kids shot," Reilly told arresting gardai.

Judge O’Donnell imposed a 10-year sentence which will run consecutively to his present jail term.

Insp Courage agreed with Mr Paul McDermot SC (with Mr Luigi Rea BL), defending, that his clients convictions dated back to when he was 16 years old when he first developed a heroin addiction.

He accepted that his addiction "played a dominant role" in his life and that one of his six children had recently died of an overdose.

Insp Courage told Mr McDermot that he did not believe that Reilly’s admissions to gardaí were a true account "of his involvement in this particular enterprise".

"I believe he had some interest in this himself and that he had been given a quantity of drugs on credit from a wholesale drug dealer who he was to pay back once he had sold on the heroin," Insp Courage told Judge O’Donnell.