A Drogheda garage owner who stored drugs, a revolver and live ammunition for another person was given a 10-year jail sentence yesterday.
Passing sentence, Judge Michael O'Shea said anybody who handled or stored drugs ought to know it carried serious consequences.
However, he accepted that Luke Bennett (30), Rowan Heights, Marley's Lane, Drogheda, did not know there was a gun in the items he agreed to hide. He was given €1,000 cash to conceal them.
The final three years of the 10-year sentence were suspended.
Dundalk Circuit Criminal Court heard that Bennett had started a business, Luke's Autos, at Mell, Drogheda and on May 17th last a team of gardaí searched an outhouse there and found the gun, a silencer for it and six rounds of live ammunition.
They were hidden in a plastic bag in the sleeve of a brown jacket which had been stuffed into a small opening in the loft of the outbuilding.
A number of car parts were also in the loft and behind an inner panel of a car door, gardaí found 7,558 tablets of amphetamines with a street value of €113,370 and cannabis with a street value of €7,000, Garda Nigel McInaw told the court.
Bennett was not on the premises when the search was carried out but returned from Dublin to meet gardaí and was arrested.
He initially told gardaí he found the drugs and gun in a car which had been left in to be repaired, but he later admitted he had been paid to store them and had had them for a week when the gardaí arrived.
Garda McInaw said the gun had been adapted so the silencer would fit it and that six rounds of live ammunition for the Webley revolver were recovered.
Judge O'Shea said storing drugs was an important link in their distribution for the middle men and the drugs barons, and if they had been distributed the amphetamines would have had a "devastating" effect.