A 44-YEAR-OLD man and a 38-year-old woman, both of whom have connections with Dingle, were last night beginning prison sentences for one of the biggest drugs hauls ever in Kerry.
The Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee heard how a morning search in Dingle on July 7th last had uncovered cannabis resin with an estimated street value of more than €700,000.
The bulk of the drugs, 65.5kg, had been found in four suitcases at Scanlon’s Cottage, Ballyhea, where the accused woman, Lisa Basire, who is English, lived in a bedsit, said Sgt Declan Liddane in reply to Tom Rice, prosecuting.
A second search of a car belonging to Ignacio Goyeneche, who has an address in Santander, Spain, found 6.3kg of the drug hidden in panels.
Both had pleaded guilty to possession for sale or supply of the drugs at Scanlon’s Cottage, and Goyeneche had told him he had brought the drugs in through Rosslare in his car a week previously when he arrived for a holiday with his son. Goyeneche had been a fisherman and had lived and worked as a trawlerman in Dingle at one stage.
Judge Carroll Moran noted that Goyeneche was now unemployed, and it was this which triggered his involvement with the drugs found in Dingle.
He said this was a sad way for Basire to celebrate her 38th birthday.
She was acting in loco parentis for two children in Dingle whose parents were ill. She was not profiting from the drugs. Neither had previous convictions and Goyeneche’s life had been “blighted” by his addiction to heroin.
Judge Moran sentenced Goyeneche to seven years and five years to run concurrently, backdating the sentence to July 8th from when he had been taken into custody. He sentenced Basire to three years in custody, backdated to December.