Eight years for 'errand boy' caught holding heroin

A carpenter who was caught with nearly €33,000 worth of heroin after he became an “errand boy” to repay a “sinister individual” who had loaned him €25,000 has been given an eight-year sentence.

Paul McGann (aged 25) had borrowed the money to do up his house but spent half of it on cocaine and was storing drugs along with assorted paraphernalia in order to knock €1,000 a week off his loan.

McGann, of Foxborough Lawns, Lucan, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of the drugs for sale or supply at his home on May 21, 2008. He has 21 previous convictions.

Judge Katherine Delahunt said there “appeared to be a virtual drug factory being run” noting that weighing scales, mobile phones, calculators, cash, and plastic were also recovered.

“You may not be at the top end of the ladder but you are not at the bottom and doing what you did you were an essential cog in the trade, you are a barrier between the gardaí and the drugs barons,” she said.

Judge Delahunt imposed an eight-year sentence and suspended the final three years on conditions.

Garda Karen Batty told Mr Sean Guerin BL, prosecuting, that gardaí acting on confidential information searched McGann’s home and found heroin with a street value of €33,749.

McGann told gardaí he had borrowed €25,000 from an individual to do up his house but had spent half of it on cocaine. He said this person had dropped off the drugs about an hour beforehand and he had been instructed to divide them up in order to have €1,000 a week knocked off his debt.

Gda Batty agreed with Mr Remy Farrell BL, defending, that McGann told gardaí he had been using between half a gram and a gram of cocaine per day but claimed not to be addicted.

She agreed that there had been an incident in which a van belonging to McGann had been smashed up and that the threats made to him were “made real.”

She agreed he was not in a position to “name names” but he gave all the information he could and had not come to garda attention in the meantime.

Mr Farrell said McGann was training as a carpenter and working sporadically. He said during “a different era, three or four years ago” McGann had secured a mortgage for his home in Lucan. He had then taken a loan from a “shady person” to do up the house but spent half of it “in a very different way.”

He said McGann was a young man who had found himself “in serious trouble and on the receiving end of real violence” after being advanced money by a “sinister individual” who then made him an “errand boy” to repay the loan.

He said that at the end of his sentence McGann would be a man who was useful to society and asked the court to allow him “some light at the end of the tunnel.”