A married father of two children had 500 images of child pornography when gardaí raided his home and two business premises on May 27th, 2002.
Kevin Hunt (40), Brookville, Hunters Lane, Ashbourne, Co Meath, pleaded guilty to the charge of possession of child pornography.
Trim Circuit Court heard yesterday he was traced by gardaí after he had used his Visa card to register with a US Internet site which, for a fee of $40 a year, operated as "an electronic gateway" to other sites on the World Wide Web containing adult and child pornography.
He was targeted as part of Operation Amethyst, during which 127 locations in the Republic were searched and more than 100 people are to be prosecuted.
Gardaí also searched two businesses connected with him and named in court as Allprint, Parnell Street, Dublin, and Celtic Greetings, Dunshaughlin Business Estate, Co Meath.
When gardaí called to his home in Ashbourne he gave them a CD which was found to contain 152 images focusing on the genital areas of pre-pubescent children and 368 pubescent or post-pubescent children.
There were 11 images where children were being subjected to sexual acts including oral intercourse, full intercourse or fondling.
There were 10 movie clips on the CD, one being described as "quite horrific" by Det Sgt Pat Lordon.
In addition gardaí found text stories on the CD which advocated incestuous and same-sex relationships with young children. Another 43 text stories were found on a floppy disc.
In reply to the defence counsel for Hunt, Det Garda Martin Hogan of the Computer Crime Investigation Branch agreed that 11 of the 500 or so images were of sexual acts, although all came within the definition of the Child Pornography Act.
Counsel said the others are primarily images of nude or naked children.
In reply to Judge Raymond Groarke, the garda said most of the children in such images are from eastern Europe, Asia and the US.
The site that Mr Hunt accessed was a financial enterprise making millions and millions of dollars as a service provider.
The garda also told the judge there was a large business on the Internet for those providing images for sale and it was done for financial gain.
Judge Groarke adjourned hearing the rest of the evidence until July 30th and remanded Hunt on continued bail. He ordered him be placed on the Sex Offenders Register.