CONVICTED drug dealer Kieran Collopy has been told he has two months to give his local authority house back to Limerick City and County Council.
At a special sitting of Limerick District Court on Monday, Judge Aeneas McCarthy granted an order for the council to take possession of the house at 92, St Ita’s Street, St Mary’s Park but put a two month stay on its execution.
Kieran Collopy (40) was jailed for eight years for heroin dealing last July in a case that Gardaí said placed them at the height of the drugs business in the city.
Collopy, who was previously jailed for threatening to kill a former associate over money owed to his dead brother Philip for a horse, was jailed for “peddling the most dangerous of drugs from the top of the pyramid”.
On December 15, 2015, Gardaí raided a joint property at 34/36 St Ita’s Street where they found Kieran Collopy and his brother Brian (43) cutting and mixing heroin before they “ran themselves in to a corner trying to escape”.
They were caught with €37,000 of the “most insidious drug” at various stages of the preparation. Heroin and mixing agents were found in pots, on the kitchen counter and in an upstairs bath.
Kieran Collopy, who has lodged an appeal against the eight-year sentence, comes from a large family of seven brothers and has a number of previous convictions including threats to kill and other drug dealing.
Collopy, who is unemployed, was described by Judge Tom O’Donnell at his sentencing hearing as an “active participant at a very high level in this strictly commercial enterprise and was at the top of the drug trade pyramid”.
The cutting and dealing of heroin was part of a “covert, calculated commercial operation carried out for the peddling of drugs which are dangerous to society.”
Collopy, who was in court on Monday to oppose the possession order, now has two months to either appeal the decision or vacate the property.
