Gardai have uncovered what they describe as the first "positive link" between republican terrorists and drug trafficking after seizing cannabis and ecstasy along with explosives in Co Monaghan near the Border.
Gardai made the discovery yesterday at the same site where they found a bomb hidden in a milk churn on Monday. It is believed an attack on the security forces in the North was being prepared.
Searching continued at the site at Clonoula near Clones and yesterday at lunchtime gardai found 11 bars of cannabis and 150 ecstasy tablets. The street value of the drugs is around £30,000.
The site is off the main Concession Road between Clones and Belturbet in the Colman's Island salient and only a few hundred feet from the Border with Co Fermanagh.
Insp Noel Cunningham from Monaghan said the finds "confirm that the dissidents are continuing to try and have so-called `successful' hits in Northern Ireland.
"To make bombs like this does not take a huge amount of expertise but it all indicates that the dissidents are committed to causing destruction and killing people."
It is not clear if the cache belonged to the Continuity IRA or `Real IRA' or indeed how long it had been there. Both groups associate and also have links to the splinter republican group, the Irish National Liberation Army, which has traded in drugs in the past.
Gardai said the drugs were well wrapped and obviously waiting to be collected and sold.
Last night, the area remained sealed off. Gardai will continue to search the immediate area.
They said their clampdown on dissident republican activity will continue and extra personnel have been sent to the general Border area as tension increases in Northern Ireland.
Loyalist terrorist groups, particularly the Ulster Defence Association, have been connected with drugs for some years. Two months ago, the RUC seized a large amount of ecstasy along with pipe bombs and explosives at an Ulster Volunteer Force arms dump at Mount Vernon in north Belfast.
Republicans have been involved in smuggling and dealing in illicit alcohol and cigarettes in recent years.
There have been suspicions they were also trafficking cannabis and ecstasy but until yesterday there was no proof.
Commenting on the explosives find, Assistant Garda Commissioner for the northern region Mr Kevin Carty said the threat from dissident republicans was not underestimated. "They have the potential to kill people and are a threat," he said.