A Co Louth grandmother who admitted storing amphetamines and cannabis resin for a drug dealer she owed money to has been given a suspended sentence.
Rita Dyas (53) pleaded guilty to possessing the drugs for the sale or supply to others at her home at Rathmullen Park, Drogheda in July 2002.
Gardaí searched the house and found three slabs of cannabis resin and 228 grammes of amphetamine with a combined street value of just over €15,000 in a plastic bag in her bedroom.
She was arrested and told gardaí that three weeks earlier a man she knew was a drug dealer and that she owned money to had arrived at the house and given her €50 to mind a plastic bag for him.
Judge Raymond Groarke heard that everything Mrs Dyas had said to gardaí was accurate and that the man she was in debt to had a capacity for violence and "is extremely well known to gardaí."
Judge Groarke said it was an "extraordinary" that she had reached her age without involvement in misconduct and was now before the courts on one of the most serious offences it deals with.
He imposed three years, suspended on each of the two charges before the court on condition she be bound to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for the next three years.