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Sarunas Lubenskas: caught tending two cannabis grow houses and twice ordered to leave

One house had almost every room converted for cannabis. Before that case was sentenced, Sarunas Lubenskas was found living in a second grow house containing 111 mature plants. Two Irish courts imposed custody and conditions requiring the Lithuanian national to leave the State.

Published 31 July 2026 · Remigration Ireland case ledger
2 grow housesDrumcondra and Dundalk
€189,852Combined reported plant values
111 plantsMature plants in second case
4 active yearsFace-value immediate terms

The Drumcondra grow house

Gardaí first encountered Lubenskas at a Carlingford Road house on 13 May 2018 while responding to a public-order report. He was intoxicated and aggressive, and officers detected an overpowering smell of cannabis. A warrant search found that all but one room had been converted for cultivation. The plants were valued at approximately €100,000.

Lubenskas initially denied responsibility and said he did not know cannabis cultivation was illegal. Garda evidence described him as the operation’s gardener, paid up to €1,000 a month to live in the property.

A second house before the first sentence

On 18 February 2021, before the Drumcondra case was sentenced, the Dundalk drugs unit raided a Seatown property and found Lubenskas lying on a bed. Four of eight rooms had been converted for cultivation; the electricity meter had been bypassed. Officers recovered 111 mature plants, saplings and cannabis herb with a reported combined value of €89,852.

Lubenskas said he had lived there rent-free for five months and that another man called every second day. He admitted being a habitual cannabis and heroin user and said he had been saving for a flight home to Lithuania.

Two sentences and leave conditions

At Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in June 2021, Lubenskas pleaded guilty to the Drumcondra cultivation offence. Judge Pauline Codd selected four years, suspended the final year and ordered him to leave the State within 28 days of release. She said a deterrent message was needed for people with no ties to the jurisdiction who became involved in the Irish drugs trade.

In January 2023, Dundalk Circuit Court imposed a consecutive three-year term for the second cultivation case, suspending its final two years. Judge Dara Hayes attached conditions that Lubenskas leave the jurisdiction within 28 days of release and not return for five years.

The reporting establishes the court orders, not whether or when they were carried out. No reliable later record reviewed confirms his departure, return, present location, appeal or further conviction. This file therefore does not convert a sentencing condition into a claim of completed removal.

Origin and status limits

Lubenskas is identified as a Lithuanian national and therefore an EU citizen. Reports said he had no family ties in Ireland. They do not establish his precise arrival date, EU residence history or any separate administrative removal process. The orders described here are the conditions reported at the two sentencing hearings.

Chronology

Public-cost benchmark

The two sentences contain four face-value years of immediate custody in total: three in the first case and one consecutive year in the second. At the Irish Prison Service’s 2024 staffed-space average of €99,072, that produces a gross benchmark of €396,288.

This is not Lubenskas’s invoice or a reconstruction of time actually served. It does not resolve remand credit, sentence administration, remission or release. It excludes both Garda operations, electricity hazards, prosecution, courts and legal aid.

Sources

Record checked: 31 July 2026. The two court-ordered leave conditions are recorded without claiming that either was enforced.