12-year terms for two guilty of heroin possession

Two Dubliners who were caught going to a stash of heroin worth €43,000 in a wooded area in Glanmire, Co Cork, were jailed for 12 years today.

The two claimed they had just gone into the woods to urinate.

Detective Sergeant Lar O’Brien said today: "We have seen the devastation caused by heroin in recent years (in Cork). Had it gone undetected it would have seriously impacted on the heroin trade."

Det. Sgt. O’Brien and Det. Garda Declan Keane were part of a surveillance at Brooklodge, Glanmire on Friday, September 5, 2008.

They testified that they saw Dubliner, Aidan Finnegan (aged 28), with addresses at Onger, Clonee, Co Meath, and Farranree in Cork, and a co-accused, Alan Morrison (aged 29), of 63, Coultry Road, Ballymun, Dublin, going to a bag concealed at undergrowth and taking something out and then putting it back again.

This bag turned out to be a stash of heroin – or diamorphine – with a street value of €40,000.

Morrison and Finnegan testified that they went nowhere near the bag and knew nothing about it.

They told the jury they only went into “the forest” to urinate. The jury did not believe them and returned verdicts of guilty against them.

Judge Patrick J. Moran imposed sentences of 12 years on both men at Cork Circuit Criminal Court today, describing it as a very serious offence.

Defence senior counsel, Tim O’Leary, said the men did not accept the guilty verdicts handed down by the jury.

Finnegan and Morrison were sentenced for being in possession of diamorphine, better known as heroin, for sale or supply at a time when it was worth more that €13,000. That offence carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and up to life imprisonment.