A diabetic who used her nine-year-old daughter to disguise her role in a €3.5 million heroin and ecstasy operation has been jailed for five years by Judge Des Hogan.
Ashley Dawson was arrested, along with another man, on the Lucan bypass with 10.5kg of heroin and 83,000 ecstasy tablets in the boot of her car. The man had been travelling in front of her in a van.
Det Garda Marie O'Sullivan told the court that the sinister criminals behind the substantial drugs operation told Dawson that gardaí would not stop her if she had a child with her in the car.
Gardaí later searched her council flat and found a further quantity of heroin, valued at almost €100,000.
Dawson (31), Dolphin House, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to two counts of unlawfully having drugs with a market value in excess of €13,000 on September 17th, 2001.
Judge Hogan said that having regard to everything that was put before him he accepted that the mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years would be unduly harsh on Dawson.
"However, taking into account the quantity and type of drugs involved I have no doubt that this is the type of offence that warrants a custodial sentence," he said.
"She also kept a large amount of the drugs in her home, and I am satisfied that she was aware of what she was doing and was therefore aware of the risk.
"She was involved in a very dangerous game and got caught," he concluded.
Det Garda O'Sullivan told Mr Fergal Foley, prosecuting, that a massive operation involving the Garda National Drugs Unit and a number of unmarked vehicles were put in place after they received confidential information that a large quantity of drugs was being moved to west Dublin.
On the day in question gardaí had Dawson's car and a white van, which were travelling in convoy, under heavy surveillance. They followed the vehicles out of Dublin towards Enfield and then back again, where they stopped them on the Lucan bypass.
A search of Dawson's car revealed a large number of cardboard boxes containing the drugs. The heroin found was worth €2.1 million, and the ecstasy tablets €1.2 million. Det Garda O'Sullivan added that the heroin that was seized was 50 per cent pure.
Dawson's home was later searched, and gardaí found a further half-kilo of heroin with an estimated value of just under €100,000.
The witness added that Dawson was working at the time as a voluntary drug counsellor and had never benefited materially from drug trafficking.
She said she needed money for Christmas but was only to be paid a few hundred pounds. She was not a drug addict.
Mr Paul Coffey SC, for Dawson, said his client was diagnosed with diabetes in 1993 and had to be injected six times a day.
She became involved in the operation because of an ill-advised friendship with the girlfriend of one of the men behind it.
She was a single mother living in wretched circumstances consistent with dire poverty. She came from a good, hardworking and law-abiding family but on her own admission her life was now ruined.