A 17-year-old Dubliner, who repeatedly sold drugs to undercover gardaí, has been detained for 13 months after a judge learned he committed an offence within hours of being released on a suspended sentence.
The teenager had pleaded guilty at Dublin Children’s Court to selling cocaine worth €50 at Mount Olive, Kilbarrack, on May 21st last year, and to supplying heroin worth €30 in Raheny, on July 14th, 2011, and cannabis worth €50 at the same place, a month earlier.
Judge Ann Ryan had imposed nine months’ detention but suspended the sentence on condition he kept the peace and was of good behaviour for two years. But his good behaviour lasted only a few hours.
Judge Ryan heard that on the night of May 21st, the youth had been part of a teen mob which had pelted gardaí and Iarnród Éireann security staff with bricks and bottles at Howth junction, in north Dublin.
Judge Ryan told the teenager, who had 10 criminal convictions, that after he got the suspended sentence: “It would have been outlined to you that the responsibility was in your own hands. You knew you must behave or risk the chance of going into detention and it is you who is putting you in detention.”
The judge reactivated the nine-month suspended sentence and gave him a consecutive four-month sentence for his other offences. He admitted being one of the 20 youths involved in the Howth junction disturbance.