A young man whom Judge Hughes said looks nothing like the people who usually come before the court will have to live with a drug dealing conviction.
“You’re not the type of character we expect to see,” said the judge.
He spoke sympathetically to 26-year-old former plasterer Peadar Tully, Mohill Road, Drumlish, who admitted he had been dealing two ounces of cannabis a week for three months to supplement his social welfare.
Garda Bobby Feery stopped his car at Ballynacargy on July 22, 2011 to search it and found two one-ounce bags of herbal cannabis worth €650 under the cowling around the gearstick.
Tully had been making a good living with his father during the boom time, but when work dried up, he began dealing and was making €100 profit on each ounce he sold.
He had been using cannabis himself since he was sixteen but is now clean.
Solicitor Owen Carty said his client’s father, who was in court, described him as “an incredible worker”, and he has since completed a FETAC course.
“It was a stupid venture, done to make money,” he said.
Judge Hughes observed that the young man was clearly uncomfortable in court, and questioned how a hard-working plasterer from a rural area had been using the drug for so long.
“You don’t strike me as the Pablo Escobar type of character, like some we see in this court,” he observed, as Tully appeared before him well-groomed and wearing a suit, shirt, and tie.
He said the punishment for him is having a conviction on his record, which will have very serious implications if he comes before the court again.
He convicted him of drug dealing and fined him €500.
