Gardai believe the £2.5 million worth of cannabis seized by Customs officers in Cork Harbour on Saturday was organised by Irish drug dealers living in exile in Spain and intended for the domestic Irish market.
They believe that one of the main figures behind the deal is a drugs baron who fled his Irish home last year after getting a tax bill from the Criminal Assets Bureau, while another Irish-based drugs baron may also have put up money for the deal.
The seizure was made when members of the Customs National Drugs Team stopped and questioned two Estonians as they were about to disembark from the Roscoff-Cork ferry at Ringaskiddy. Customs officers became suspicious and detained the men and brought their passenger van to an inspection facility where customs experts began a detailed search of the vehicle. The officers used an angle grinder to cut away a false metal floor under which they found 250 kilos of cannabis resin.
The two men - one aged 40 and one aged 24 - were arrested by gardai under Section 2 of the Criminal Justice Drugs Trafficking Act, which allows for detention for up to seven days.
The two men were taken to Togher Garda Station for questioning by members of Cork City Divisional Drugs Squad, and the questioning about the shipment continued last night.
Gardai believe the cannabis - described as being of a particularly high quality - was sourced in Morocco, smuggled into Spain and transported overland to Brittany before being brought by ferry to Cork.
Mr Brendan Mulcahy of the Customs National Drugs Team said: "The seizure resulted from the normal monitoring of car ferry traffic by customs. It was not as a result of any previous prior intelligence, it was a result of customs profiling techniques." Customs officials yesterday put the cannabis haul on show at Anglesea Garda Station in Cork before it was transferred under armed Garda escort to the State forensic laboratory in Dublin for analysis.
Saturday's seizure is the biggest at Ringaskiddy Ferry Port since 1992, when Customs National Drugs officers uncovered a £3 million cannabis shipment on board a vehicle disembarking in Cork.
Since its establishment in January 1993, the Customs National Drugs Team has made many large seizures including a cannabis find worth £17.7 million on board a pleasure craft in Kilrush harbour, Co Clare, in 1996. Huge consignments of cannabis have also been recovered by local fishermen who catch the drugs in their nets.
Cannabis is most commonly seized in the form of cannabis resin but packages of the hemp plant have also been discovered in Irish drug hauls.