It should be a marriage made in heaven. The Penguin's daughter is finally to wed the Footballer. Both families have been waiting - the way relatives do - for the two to tie the knot. Lord knows, they've been together long enough. But at last, a little skite to the Caribbean is planned. An exchange of rings under palm trees bordering golden sands, and then everyone will get very drunk.

A more bitter drink, perhaps, than it would have been little over a year ago. For there will be a few gaps in the congregation for the marriage of two of Dublin's largest drug-running families.

The daughter of the Penguin, a Ballyfermot-based drug dealer, will be pleased no doubt to see her father again. He has been on the run for most of the year, hiding in Amsterdam apartments. The Footballer is still in business in Dublin, fortunate to have been acquitted on drugs charges not long ago by a British court.

Another prominent drug dealer named Peter is expected to show up. His city centre drug business collapsed six months ago when he fled Dublin - he is also believed to be holed up in Holland. However, Tom, one of his best dealing friends can't make it. Tom is now in a British jail.

The murder of Veronica Guerin has changed their world. Some of the biggest players in the business went a hit too far, and everyone in the Dublin drugs underworld is suffering as a result.

Foreign holidays were a favourite way to spend money in the old days. Drug dealers would buy decent-sized houses in Dublin for themselves and their families, extra cars for brothers and girlfriends. But nothing too extravagant. Foreign trips were seen as the best way to enjoy the vast sums accumulating as the drugs business took off in a way not seen since the 1980s.

Perhaps John Gilligan, the man now in a British jail who says he made his fortune gambling, was the most feared criminal in the State. But he was also the most obvious. With his stud farm in Kildare, a model of bad taste with its hangar-like equestrian arena and lantern-lined driveway, he broke unwritten rules about not being too flash at home.

His wife, Geraldine, was a star of the family videos. She is shown standing outside the same arena with a tableful of trophies, as a cluster of the horsey set looks on. The MC calls out one double-barrelled name after another and the jodhpur-clad young women skip up to Geraldine to accept their prizes. Ordinary people with the simple joy of winning a silver cup, little knowing they were playing a role in a grand plan for a criminal to buy his way to respectable society.

Now Mr Gilligan sits in a cell in Belmarsh Prison, London, awaiting extradition to Dublin on a charge of murdering Ms Guerin.

In the Netherlands, another man sits in a cell awaiting the same fate. Brian Meehan will face up to 20 charges including one for murder. He was one of the people who fled when the Garda cracked down on the Dublin gangs.

Then last week, two Garda detectives followed his girlfriend on to a flight to Amsterdam. She landed at Schipol airport, outside the city, and the detectives linked up with local police ready to join in the surveillance operation.

Before long she had bought her 10-guilder ticket for the train into the city. The police watched as she met Meehan and John Traynor, a Rathmines car dealer. Traynor they had not expected to see. He had been thought to be in Malaga or the Canaries since he fled shortly after Ms Guerin was killed.

Meehan and Traynor, false passports in their pockets and less than £150 between them, must have been delighted to see a familiar face. Then a gang of shouting armed men pounced, quickly searched them for weapons, and dragged them off to the police station.

Traynor was later let go. With at least two people back in Dublin in Garda custody ready to inform on Ireland's major criminal gang of the last three years, Traynor is in a tricky position. He must surely be suspected of many crimes in the Republic. He has a history of helping gardai with small queries, and was a source of information for Ms Guerin on the criminal underworld, before their relationship soured when she accused him of being a drug dealer.

Now everyone can see that while both he and Meehan were nabbed in Amsterdam, only Meehan has to stay in a cell awaiting extradition. Traynor is suddenly out. Gardai have formally denied they have made any arrangement with him in return for information.

Traynor is thought to have left Amsterdam almost as soon as he was released last weekend. Gardai say they were not yet ready to seek his extradition. In any event, he is not considered the brightest or most resourceful of men. "He'll show up again," says one garda. "We can probably get him easily enough if we want him."

Back in Dublin, a drugs business turning over millions of pounds a week has been dismantled by the Garda. The State has put an unprecedented effort into its response to organised crime. More than 100 guns have been found by detectives, the Criminal Assets Bureau is now routinely seizing houses, freezing cash in bank accounts, forcing previously hidden magnates into court and into arguments with each other over who was involved in which financial transaction.

There is no-one - in Government, the Garda, or the drug trade - who believes the illegal drugs business is smashed. So long as there is a demand for drugs, there will always be someone ready to supply them.

More than half the 600 people crammed into Mountjoy jail - mainly for drugs-related offences - come from just six deprived areas of Dublin. The link between drugs and disadvantage was never clearer, but to redress the balance would require a redistribution of wealth and opportunity so momentous it cannot even be contemplated. It could not come within the scope of even the most flowery of presidential campaign speeches.

The Government has allocated up to £20 million for schemes in these areas aimed at turning children away from drugs - a fortune compared to two years ago, but still less than 5 per cent of the annual law-and-order budget.

So at least those gathering for the Caribbean wedding can be assured that while their trade has been disrupted by the Garda, the market will still be there if the pressure eases. Meanwhile, they can toast the happy couple . . . and absent friends.