LOCAL drug treatment projects rather than central government should benefit from the capture of a major heroin dealer's money in Tallaght, a judge suggested yesterday.
Judge Cyril Kelly was speaking at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, when asked to make a forfeiture order in relation to £8,000 found on Elaine Moore.
Judge Kelly indicated the Criminal Law Act (1994) gave the courts wide discretion on the dispersal of the proceeds of drug dealing.
However, prosecution counsel Mr Shane Murphy said the law had been drafted to deal with all sorts of assets a drug dealer might acquire, but it appeared money should go to the central fund.
Judge Kelly said he would hear further legal submissions on this point during Moore's sentence hearing on April 7th next.
In July the mother of one became the first person in the State to be charged with handling the assets of drug dealing, a new offence created by the 1994 Act.
Moore (26), of Alderpark Court, Tallaght, Dublin, pleaded guilty to handling the money on November 21st, 1995, "knowing or believing such property in whole or in part. indirectly represented Alan Lynch's proceeds from drug dealing".
She also admitted a second charge of allowing her house to be used to distribute heroin.
Last December Lynch (28) pleaded guilty to possessing £50,000 worth of heroin for supply at the house in Alderpark Court where he was living on November 17th, 1995. He is to be sentenced on February 17th.
The court heard his assets have already been frozen and the High Court is to hear an application for seizure.
Garda Michael Monaghan said Moore had just withdrawn the money from her bank account for her then boyfriend Lynch when arrested. He had been one of the major heroin suppliers in the south city.
She had been living with Lynch at the time and knew he was involved in drugs but not the extent. She has ended the relationship, Garda Monaghan said. She was not involved in Lynch's drug business.
Garda Monaghan agreed she came from a very respectable family.