Limping into court on crutches, wearing an anorak and casual clothes, to hear a judge impose an eight-year sentence for possessing ecstasy, John Noonan looked an unlikely drugs baron. But his sentencing by Judge Kevin O'Connor on Wednesday morning marked the end of one of the last big drug traffickers to emerge with the black economy of drugs in this State in the 1970s and 1980s.

Noonan was a career criminal from west Dublin who grew up with, and served terms of Borstal and imprisonment with, most of the major figures in the Republic's crime scene.

He counted among his associates George "the Penguin" Mitchell, now approaching the end of a prison term in Holland for hijacking; the leader of the gang that murdered the journalist Veronica Guerin; another man who controlled Dublin's smuggled tobacco trade; Martin Cahill and most of his gang; and the very significant drug traffickers in Cork who smuggled hundreds of tonnes into the State in the past two decades.

Remarkably, Noonan appears to have been able to manage his relations with all these figures without being caught up in the frequent and deadly rivalries that usually mark such criminal relation ships.

His ability to operate in such a professional manner with other criminals earned him the position of Irish liaison figure with one of the biggest international cannabis smuggling organisations, from the late 1980s led by Dutch, Canadian and California-based criminals.

This gang was responsible for sending the 13 tonnes of cannabis to Ireland in 1995 which gardai intercepted at sea as it was being transferred to a trawler to land in west Cork.

The Garda National Drug Unit (GNDU) had intended to "control-deliver" the shipment through the Republic as part of an international police and US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) operation to capture the suppliers and the purchasers.

Details of the shipment leaked to the Irish media and the operation was compromised. A decision was made to abort the mission and the drugs were stopped at Urlingford, Co Kilkenny.

At the same time the lorry carrying the drugs was stopped, Noonan and a close associate, another Finglas criminal figure who acted as "bag man" or courier for Noonan, were arrested in Finglas.

In the boot of a car gardai found £220,000, and Noonan had another £13,000 in cash on his person. The £233,000 was intended as payment for expenses for the lorry driver who was to transport the drugs through the Republic to their final destination in England where they were to be collected by members of another criminal gang.

Noonan was released after the statutory period without charge. The gardai were not then equipped with the seizure powers granted under the criminal assets legislation after Veronica Guerin's murder, but the money was seized under suspicion that it was to be used for drugs trafficking.

Noonan made an initial legal attempt to get the money returned but gave up, and the money was held by the State. It was then one of the largest amounts of criminal funds ever sequestered.

The seizure might have effectively ruined Noonan's career as one of the Republic's major drug dealers with high-level international links.

The operation in Ireland was also the beginning of the end for the gang responsible for shipping the 13 tonnes of cannabis. In December 1996, 18 members of the gang were arrested after another huge haul of the drug - this time 25 tonnes - was seized on a ship in the south Pacific.

A 43-year-old Californian, Gary Matsuzaki, and a 38-year-old Austrian, Charles Staunton, who had both visited Cork and liaised with Noonan, were arrested by DEA agents and brought before a federal grand jury in Los Angeles.

With the gradual increase in the State's and Garda's operations against the drugs industry here, Noonan became a prime target of the GNDU. His career ended in May last year when his nemesis in the Drugs Unit, Det Sgt Pat Walsh, caught up with him on Greenhills Road, Walkinstown. Noonan, a hands-on trafficker, had 1,851 ecstasy tablets on him, worth around £27,000.

Sgt Walsh, who had also taken part in the seizure of the 13 tonnes of cannabis in 1995, was accompanied by Det Garda Patricia McGarrity. They worked under the direction of then Chief Supt Kevin Carty (now Assistant Commissioner) and Supt Austin McNally (now Chief Superintendent).

Det Garda McGarrity, giving evidence against Noonan at the Circuit Court on Wednesday, said it was rare to catch a dealer as significant as Noonan in possession of drugs.

She described him as a serious distributor and not the type who would be found selling drugs on a street corner.

Noonan pleaded guilty to possession of the ecstasy but claimed that he had been in a public house in Tallaght and a man he met there offered him £300 to transport cannabis. He did not know the box in his car contained ecstasy, he claimed.

Noonan's "explanation" failed to impress Judge O'Connor, who sentenced him to eight years' imprisonment. However, in the absence of any evidence that Noonan had amassed a fortune for drug dealing, he was allowed to appeal against the severity of sentence, with a review date set in 2003.