A Co Clare businessman was in Garda custody last night after a seizure of drugs with an estimated street value of at least €4 million. Conor Lally and Gordon Deegan report.
The haul is one of the biggest this year and included cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis and amphetamines.
The drugs were found in a van stopped by gardaí close to Killaloe, Co Clare, at 10am yesterday morning.
The driver of the van, a local man in his 30s, was arrested and taken to Killaloe Garda station where he was being questioned last night.
Garda sources said an initial examination of the drugs indicated a street value of around €4 million. However, this was provisional and may rise, depending on the results of tests to assess the drug type of all packages found and the purity of each.
A number of follow-up searches of properties around Killaloe linked to the arrested man were being carried out by gardaí last night.
Yesterday's operation involved members of the Garda National Drug Unit and local gardaí. The man in custody last night had been under surveillance for some time. He is known to gardaí and is believed to have been involved in the supply of drugs in counties Clare, Galway and Limerick.
The man is a director of a construction company that has recently been involved in the development of residential property in the west of Ireland.
The Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) is to join the investigation into the suspect's activities, to assess if his legitimate building company has been in any way funded by the drugs trade.
Supt Tony Kenneally of Killaloe Garda station said the value of the drugs may be considerably more than €4 million. "The seizure included up to 500,000 ecstasy tabs, a couple of hundred kilos of hash and several kilos of cocaine. It will certainly remove a lot of drugs from the market."
The arrested man was stopped in his van around 3km (two miles) from Killaloe, on the road linking the east Clare town to O'Brien's Bridge, near the River Shannon. He was being detained last night under Section 2 of the Criminal Justice Drug Trafficking Act and can be held without charge for up to seven days.
Yesterday's operation follows the seizure in Limerick city two weeks ago of cocaine and heroin with an estimated street value of €1 million. Seven firearms, including Glock semi-automatic pistols and semi-automatic machine guns, were also found in that operation.
One week earlier, heroin with a street value put at around €8 million was seized in north Co Dublin, along with five Glock pistols.