Man who ran cocaine 'manufacturing plant' remanded

A Tallaght man who was running "a manufacturing plant" by mixing and storing cocaine in his place of work has been remanded in custody pending sentence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Padraig Murphy (aged 37), of Kilmartin Avenue, was caught with €172,500 worth of cocaine, along with tape, metal moulds, a mixing agent and a wrapping machine in three lockers in the premises.

His defence counsel Mr Remy Farrell BL, told the court that "a drug debt from his past had come back to haunt" his client as Murphy owed a dealer €10,000 after using cocaine for a number of years.

He said Murphy, who had held a managerial position in the company, said the man he had owed the debt to had "disappeared for quite a while before he re-emerged" and then put Murphy under pressure to get involved in this offence.

Mr Farrell told Judge Katherine Delahunt that a jeep his client had been driving at the time has since been burnt out which he said was "done at the instigation of others who had an interest in things".

Judge Delahunt said that Murphy had in his possession "all the trappings of a manufacturing plant".

"I was under the impression that your client got involved in this offence for the purpose of paying off a drug debt" Judge Delahunt said after she noted that at the time of his arrest Murphy drove a large jeep and his pre-tax earnings were €58,000 per year.

She revoked Murphy’s bail and remanded him in custody after she adjourned the case to later this month to allow Mr Farrell time to put evidence together of his client’s financial situation.

Murphy pleaded guilty to possession of the cocaine for sale or supply at the business in an Dublin Industrial Estate on January 31, 2008. Gardai were satisifed that his employer knew nothing of the offence and Murphy has since lost his job there.

He had one previous conviction for larceny in 1998 but had not come to garda attention since.

Garda Eva Micheau told Ms Fiona Murphy BL, prosecuting, that gardaí contacted Murphy following receipt of confidential information and he voluntarily met with them at a car park close to his workplace. He later accompanied them to the office where he supplied them with keys to three lockers.

Murphy told gardaí that he had been both mixing and storing the cocaine for someone he was in fear of and he was to wait for a phone call to tell him where to drop the drugs off.

He said he had used the metal moulds for shaping the drugs and prepared the cocaine in this way once every two or three weeks when all his colleagues had left for the day.

Gda Micheau agreed with Mr Farrell that it was initially suspected that Murphy was involved in this crime purely to make profit but it was then realised that he had a history of heavy drug use and was under pressure to pay back a debt. He had re-mortgaged the family house and was struggling financially.

She accepted that while Murphy was part of this drug chain and was not at the bottom rung of the ladder, he was "not far from it".