A County Clare man has told a court that he never knew that three pallets couriered to his grand-mother\u2019s address in west Clare last Friday contained an alleged \u20ac2m drugs consignment.<\/p>\n
At Ennis District Court on Wednesday, Odhran O\u2019Brien (32) said: \u201cCan I say something? I never knew what was on that pallet \u2013 it was my grand-mother\u2019s address. I was told that it was car parts.\u201d<\/p>\n
During a contested bail hearing, Mr O\u2019Brien of Cahermurphy, Kilmihil, Co Clare told Judge Adrian Harris \u201cI have no words for the situation that I am in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Brien\u2019s sister and partner were in court for the hearing and Mr O\u2019Brien said: \u201cI just want to go back to my family.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the case, Mr O\u2019Brien is charged with having in his possession cannabis for the purpose of selling at Cahermurphy, Kilmihil, Co Clare on May 8th last contrary to Section 15 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Brien is also charged with the unlawful possession of cannabis on the same date at the same address.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Brien was first brought before a special sitting of Ennis District Court on Saturday and remanded in custody to appear at Ennis District Court today.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Brien said today that he would agree to any conditions connected to him securing bail.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cAnything that I am asked to do I will do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Referring to his family, Mr O\u2019Brien said: \u201cI am so sorry for them for what has happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Judge Harris refused bail and remanded Mr O\u2019Brien in custody after Gardai objected to bail.<\/p>\n
Det Garda D\u00e1ith\u00ed King told the court that Mr O\u2019Brien had been caught \u2018red-handed\u2019 concerning the alleged drugs seizure.<\/p>\n
Det Garda King said that on May 8th Gardai went to the property after executing a misuse of drugs warrant and when approaching Mr O\u2019Brien at the property he threw two mobile phones into a nearby field.<\/p>\n
He said that Gardai discovered three pallets located in a shed at the address and these were wrapped in plastic and subsequently found to contain 40 packets of suspected cannabis.<\/p>\n
He said that the cannabis totalled 100kgs of suspected cannabis and the State would value the drugs at \u20ac2m.<\/p>\n
He said that the pallets were received by Mr O\u2019Brien from a courier earlier that day.<\/p>\n
Det Garda King said that Mr O\u2019Brien says he is now drug free after indicating that he was previously addicted to cannabis.<\/p>\n
Det Garda King said that while in custody Mr O\u2019Brien made Garda aware of a drug debt he had accumulated over the years.<\/p>\n
Det King alleged that the quantity of cannabis suggests Mr O\u2019Brien \u201cis at the upper end of the food chain judge\u201d.<\/p>\n
Det King claimed Mr O\u2019Brien is a potential flight risk and told Gardai that he had employment lined up in England.<\/p>\n
Solicitor for Mr O\u2019Brien, John Casey said that Mr O\u2019Brien\u2019s sister was in court to provide an independent surety if required.<\/p>\n
Mr Casey said that this is a case that will go forward on indictment to the circuit court and if bail is refused, Mr O\u2019Brien will be in custody for a substantial period of time pending the trial.<\/p>\n
Mr Casey asked Judge Harris not to be swayed by the \u20ac2m value that Gardai have put on the drugs and let that not be the determining factor in making his decision on the bail application.<\/p>\n
Mr Casey said that the positive factors in the bail application outweigh that factor.<\/p>\n
Judge Harris remanded Mr O\u2019Brien in custody to appear via video link from prison at Ennis District Court on May 27th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A County Clare man has told a court that he never knew that three pallets couriered to his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-447834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}