Mother and Baby Home survivor ran cannabis grow house

A Mother and Baby Home survivor, who came to Galway to assist in the investigation into the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, has been jailed for two years for operating a lucrative cannabis grow-house near Ahascragh.

Anthony Fennell (52), 25 Kildonan Road, Finglas, Dublin 7, was paying €1,000 cash every month for three years to rent the house at Killure Castle, Ahascragh, while unemployed with no visible means of support.

He said the Tuam investigation took longer than expected and he had to turn the premises into a grow-house to fund his stay in Galway when his savings ran out.

He pleaded guilty before Galway Circuit Criminal Court to cultivating 49 cannabis plants at the property on September 10, 2019.

The court heard each plant had a street value of €800 once harvested, bringing the total value of the seizure to €39,200.

Garda Eoin Fox told Fennell’s sentencing hearing last Friday he obtained a warrant to search the premises after speaking on the phone to a colleague who had executed a European Arrest warrant at the property earlier on September 10, 2019.

An extremely strong smell of cannabis emanated from the property when he arrived to execute the warrant that day with fumes coming down the stairs to meet him.

Garda Fox found a new door had been fitted on the landing upstairs which was sealed with black plastic sheeting. Numerous walls had been knocked through to make one large room in the upstairs area.

He found 49 mature cannabis plants growing there, tended by hydration, air filtration, feeding and heating systems.

Prosecuting State barrister, Conal McCarthy, explained Fennell was brought from his place of detention to Ballinasloe Garda station later that day and interviewed.

Garda Fox said that on the whole, Fennell co-operated in the Garda investigation without incriminating himself.

Fennell’s barrister, Dara Foynes SC, said her client had been renting the property, paying €1,000 cash per month, as requested since arriving in the area in 2017 to assist in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home investigation.

The investigation took much longer than anticipated and when Fennell’s savings ran out, be borrowed money from people whose terms and conditions for the loan were that his rented house be used as a cannabis grow-house, she said.

Describing Fennell’s life as “a story of triumph over adversity”, she said he was born in the Summerhill tenements in 1969.  His mother abandoned him when he was ten weeks old and he was sent to St. Anne’s Industrial School where he was used in six vaccination trials.

His mother took him out aged twelve and they went to Wales where he again ended up in another care institution suffering a worse fate there.

Ms Foynes said Fennell took the grow house money so he could stay on to help the Tuam survivors – but it was not his grow-house.

Noting the maximum sentence for cultivating cannabis was 14 years, the judge imposed a three-year sentence with the final year suspended for five years.

“We must sympathise with the defendant and other victims who were subjected to psychological or sexual abuse at the hands of the State or religious organisations but that can in no way justify his clearly pre-meditated decision to cultivate cannabis for making money,” the judge said before placing Fennell under the supervision of the probation service for the next twelve months.

*When first published online, the headline of this article erroneously read ‘Tuam Mother and Baby Home survivor ran cannabis grow house’. It has been updated to remove the word ‘Tuam’, which was added in error during the editing process.