A south Dublin drug dealer has been sentenced to four years in jail, two years suspended, at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court after he was caught with €4,200 worth of cocaine.
Anthony Phelan (20), Rosemount Estate, Dundrum, pleaded guilty to having cocaine for sale or supply at Rosemount Court, Dundrum, on January 14th, 2006.
Judge Katherine Delahunt took into account Phelan's age at the time of the offence, but said he tried to hide the drugs from gardaí.
She also noted that he had made little effort to deal with his drug addiction before.
The judge suspended the last two years of the sentence on condition that Phelan keep the peace and be of good behaviour for two years upon his release from prison.
Garda Richard Noonan told Noel Devitt, prosecuting, that Phelan was in an apartment when gardaí arrived to search it. He ran to a balcony and threw a bag of cocaine over to a neighbouring balcony.
He later accepted in a Garda interview that he was selling the cocaine and expected to make 30 bags out of the 58 grammes of the drug found and sell it for a little less than €2,000.
He said he had been selling drugs for two months but would normally sell cannabis. He had one previous conviction for possession of drugs from Dún Laoghaire District Court.
Garda Noonan agreed with Remy Farrell, defending, that Phelan was only 18 at the time and that the search was carried out on his girlfriend's rented apartment.
Mr Farrell told Judge Delahunt that although Phelan's mother would not accept him in the family home when he started using cannabis, she was now happy to have him living with her.
He acknowledged that Phelan had taken "limited steps to deal with his addiction" and that his efforts to rehabilitate "came very late in the day".