Andrew Carey | [email protected]
THE DIRECTOR of Public Prosecutions has lodged and appeal against the five year sentence given to a man who was found storing almost €1million drugs and guns for a Limerick criminal gang.
46-year-old John Ryan from Airfield Terrace, St Patrick’s Road, Limerick was jailed last year for acting as a storeman for a gang that he owed money to.
Limerick Circuit Court heard that he had never come to Garda attention before May 2011 when he was arrested as part of a major drugs and firearms seizure by gardai in Limerick backed up by the Regional Armed Support Unit.
Judge Carroll Moran heard that the father of two needed €5,000 to repay a gambling debt he had accrued to a sinister gang.
During the intelligence led operation, Ryan was arrested at an apartment at Bellfield House Ennis Road, Limerick where he was found with storing heroin, cocaine, cannabis, MDMA tablets and other drugs with a total street value of €918,737.
A German made Walther Pistol, a revolver, balaclavas and an assortment of ammunition including 32 rounds of ammunition suitable for discharge in semi automatic weapons were also seized in the raid.
Ryan pleaded guilty to possession of the drugs for sale or supply and possession of the firearms and was described as the “quarter master” in the operation.
Gardai said that he was at the lowest rung of the financial ladder and was in fear of naming those behind the operation.
Jailing him for five years, Judge Carroll Moran said Ryan had become “trapped in a situation he couldn’t escape from.”
However, it has emerged that the State has now lodged an appeal with the Court of Court of Criminal Appeal on the grounds of undue leniancy.
