A man who converted a rented house into a cannabis growing factory has been given a suspended sentence on condition that he leave the country immediately.
Vietnamese national Thang Nguyen (32),with an address at Swords Road, Santry has been on remand in prison pending sentence for the last 11 months after a warrant was issued for his arrest when he failed to appear at a previous court hearing.
"We have enough of our home grown criminals," Judge Frank O'Donnell commented when he sentenced Nguyen for what he described as "a very sophisticated offence".
He suspended the balance of the sentence on the condition that Nguyen be deported or leave Ireland voluntarily and not return for 10 years.
Nguyen pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to cultivation of cannabis without a license at the house on Claude Road, Drumcondra on June 6th, 2007. He had no previous convictions.
Garda Peter Breen told the court the second floor in the house and the attic had been converted into a "cultivation factory" for the growing of cannabis. He said when the house was first rented there were two bedrooms on the first floor and an attic bedroom.
Gardai searched the house in June 2007 following confidential information and a found a plastic sheet draped across the entire width of the staircase. A small bathroom had been used as a pumping station to irrigate the mature plants on the first floor and the young plants, in what was effectively a nursery, in the attic.
Garda Breen said that the electricity meter had been elaborately "by-passed" to provide 14.4 Kilowatts of electricity to the filtration, heating and lighting systems that had been used to cultivate the cannabis while the downstairs in the house was
using electricity as normal from the grid.
There were 90 mature plants, all over five feet tall, on the first floor and almost as many younger smaller plants in the attic, which Gda Breen said led to "a strong smell of cannabis in the house".
He said that fertiliser was found in the shed in the back garden, while "pods", used to grow the cannabis seeds, were found in the kitchen.
Gda Breen said Nguyen was arrested in the house when gardai arrived with the warrant to search the premises.
He initially denied all knowledge of the cannabis and its cultivation but his fingerprints were later found on a number of transformers and other items in the attic of the house.
A Vietnamese couple, who "turned a blind eye" to the "factory", were given a one year suspended sentence by Judge Martin Nolan last June, after they pleaded guilty to knowingly suffering, or failing to report, the cultivation of the plants.
It was accepted that Oanh Thuy Ngo (25) of Claude Road, Dublin 9, and Thanh Ngoc Ngugen (32) of Swords Road, Santry were not involved in actually growing the cannabis as their fingerprints were never found on any of the equipment.