Two men who smuggled more than €2.6 million of heroin and cocaine into Ireland in secret compartments in a van have been sent to prison for 12 years.
Judge Frank O'Donnell told 25-year-old Paul Morgan and 23-year-old Francis McConlough that the message must go out that it was a high-risk business to bring drugs into Ireland.
He also said that while in many cases the quantity of drugs the courts dealt with was 'equivalent to sticks of gelignite' and said the quantity in this case was 'the equivalent of an atomic bomb'.
Anyone involved in the drugs trade, he said, was motivated by money and greed and had no concern for the havoc they wreaked on users or society as a whole.
The two men, who are both from Liverpool in England, smuggled 13kg of heroin and 1kg of cocaine into Ireland in February 2006.
They were bringing the €2.6m worth in for a north city criminal gang but the Garda National Drugs Unit had them under surveillance.
When they drove into a car park at the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre their van was stopped and searched and the drugs were found hidden in a secret compartment under the passenger seat.
Both said they feared for their lives if they co-operated with the garda investigation but Judge O'Donnell said today that everyone in the drugs business, at the top and the bottom, is exposed to this retribution and no one was exempt.
Judge O'Donnell also said that his sympathy for the pleas from Morgan's mother and McConlough's father was tempered by the sympathy he has for the parents of the families of drug addicts.
