Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council has been given the go-ahead by a judge to close down a house which "was and still is being used as a drugs sales centre".
Judge Liam Devally yesterday told the council it could evict Ms Dolores Byrne (51), a widow, of Rollins Villas, Sallynoggin, for anti-social behaviour.
Judge Devally told Mr Martin Dully, counsel for the local authority, that the house had been turned into a distribution point for drug-dealers, including members of her own family.
He said her evidence as to her ownership of £9,000 in a post office account in her son's name was completely untruthful, implausible and farcical.
"It's a sad and tragic case because this is a house of drug-dealing which has destroyed the lives of many of her family," Judge Devally said. There was no other way of dealing with this scourge but to close down her home and drug sales centre. He had no doubt that was what it was and it could not be closed down if she was allowed to remain there.
Rejecting a plea by Mr Paul Coffey, for Ms Byrne, to exclude only those members of her family known to be associated with heroin, Judge Devally said it would not work. There was evidence of general public access to her home, where gardai had found money and electronic scales. "It does not give me any great joy to enforce tough laws but children in such areas get to know drugs can be obtained in such houses because the occupants use drugs themselves."
Judge Devally said Section 62 of the Housing Act 1966, which allowed the court no discretion but to issue a warrant for possession of the house, had been met.
Ms Byrne said she had been heartbroken watching drugs destroy her family over the last 18 years but denied her home had been used for drug-dealing. Money found in the house was her own and emanated from a £30,000 personal injuries award.
Sgt Paul Hogan, of the Dun Laoghaire Drugs Unit, said her family was known to gardai as perhaps the biggest player dealing exclusively in the heroin trade in Dun Laoghaire.